To meet the need for clinicians during the coronavirus pandemic, SSM Health and Saint Louis University’s Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing are expediting itst Return to Practice collaboration, which is open to people with registered nursing experience in the St. Louis and Oklahoma City regions.
The program pays nurses throughout the training and provides remote and hands-on instruction to nursing professionals who wish to return to patient care. The course, which typically takes four weeks to complete, is being condensed to two weeks to allow returning clinicians to make an immediate impact. Participants will be paired with more experienced nurses on the job once their training is complete.
Once the pandemic is over, participants have the option to continue as an SSM Health nurse and go through the SSM Health new hire nurse onboarding program. St. Louis area nurses would join the teams at SSM Health DePaul Hospital, SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital-St. Charles and SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital. Nurses in Oklahoma who complete the program would be placed at SSM hospitals in that state.
Amber Wood, Director of Learning and Development for SSM Health, Amber Wood, said,“Most of us become nurses because we want to make a difference,” Wood says. “I talk to many former nurses who would like to come back to the field but are not even sure how to begin. This program lets them see a clear path back to patient care even if it is only to support during the pandemic.”
Wood and her team aimed to enable nurses who had been away from active nursing to gain training and update their licenses. Joanne Langan, professor of nursing at SLU and coordinator of Disaster Preparedness and Return to Practice at the Valentine School of Nursing, worked with SLU faculty, staff and IT support teams to quickly adapt the program to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The program initially launched at SSM Health in 2017.
The next Return to Practice begins April 20. For more information, visit: https://ssmhealth.avature.net/RNReturntoPractice.