Use JaneTM as a Personalized Nurse Advisor to Support Retention Improvement

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

Few people who work in healthcare can be unaware of the significant challenge many organizations face with nurse retention, especially from the looming issue of nurse shortages. A previous HealthStream blog post shares that “While historically nursing shortages have been driven by a variety of factors, the current shortage actually resembles earlier ones in that it is partially driven by an increase in demand. An aging population and their increasing healthcare needs has led to an increase in demand that has well exceeded the nursing workforce. In addition, the historically female profession has had retention issues now that women have a greater variety of career options. Nurse-led efforts to improve opportunities, pay, and working conditions have led to improvements in retention and work-life balance; yet, demand for nurses continues to exceed supply, resulting in an increased focus on retention.”

Standardized Assessment and Training Can Be a Nurse Retention Problem

There are many occasions when a standardized approach to nurse orientation, assessment, and training fails to create a retention-friendly environment. For example, an experienced clinician may resent being assigned the same introduction to your organization and your approach to patient care that an inexperienced new graduate is also required to complete. At the same time, it is essential for new graduate nurses just starting their careers to get adequate orientation training. Otherwise, they may feel lost, accompanied by some degree of anxiety and even panic. What if you inadvertently lead these novice nurses to ultimately question their choice of a career? Organizations want to avoid investing significant time and resources getting new hires ready to care for patients just to have them quit from the stress and frustration of not feeling adequately prepared.

JaneTM as a Tool for Improving Nurse Retention

HealthStream has established the JaneTM system as a highly reliable, effective, and evidence-based method for the assessment and validation of clinical competency—with the ultimate goal of more targeted orientation, personalized developmental training, and individualized on-going maintenance of competency. A big contributor to nurse turnover is burnout, which nurses may experience due to the stress of an overwhelming workload or from feeling inadequately prepared for their jobs. Here are some of the ways JaneTM works as a personal nurse adviser to support nurse retention:

  • Personalized Development Plans

    Supporting a methodical approach to expanding the use of critical thinking in daily nursing practice, JaneTM connects to post-assessment development reflective plans that guide next steps in clinicians’ professional journeys.

  • Investment in Clinician Competency

    Healthcare organizations need to be certain staff members are competent and able to provide high quality care. Regular assessments are one way to ensure whether employees are qualified or need training to become so.

  • Investment in Well-trained Colleagues

    There’s no need to worry that colleagues are providing substandard care when Jane is used to regularly assess their competency and help them fill any knowledge gaps.

  • Support Lifelong Learning for Nursing Career Success

    In nursing the reliance on evidence-based practice means the standards for competent care are constantly changing and improving. For long-term career success, nursing professionals must engage in continuous training and education. Jane facilitates regular advancement, using individual assessments as a guide.

  • Assist Nurses to Change Their Career Focus and Switch Departments

Sometimes the cure for burnout may be to change nursing environments, which also can change standard practices and require new training. JaneTM facilitates the competency assessment and training that may be necessary for those switching to a new clinical specialty, where different kinds of patients, treatments, and healthcare situations are involved.

HealthStream’s jane™ is The World’s First Digital Mentor for Nurses. Jane harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create a system that personalizes competency development at scale, quickly identifies risk and opportunity, and improves quality outcomes by focusing on critical thinking. Leveraging decades of research and with over 4 million assessments completed, Jane was designed to power lifelong, professional growth of clinical professionals. JaneTM is an important component of HealthStream’s suite of clinical development solutions.