Background: Shortly after the graduate nurses’ orientation period, the expectation is to rapidly function as a competent nurse. With this expectation, the graduate nurse experiences stress when attempting to quickly make the transition from student to practicing professional nurse. New nurses report that the primary reason they are leaving their employment within the first year is related to stress and thus low job satisfaction.

Purpose: The overall turnover rate for a community Catholic Hospital’s Critical Care Department is 60% within the past year. Combating the turnover, increasing satisfaction, and ensuring patient safety is what is needed for this hospital.

Methodology: The design for this project is comparative and correlational utilizing the Casey Fink New Graduate Nurse Survey. Residents involved in the revised residency program were surveyed on their job satisfaction and comfort-confidence after six months of residency. The results from the new residents were compared to nurses who had completed the previous residency program who had at least six months of experience.

Results: The results demonstrated the new residency program had no statistical significance on comfort, however, presented a statistically significant association with how new nurses experience the work environment of the Critical Care department.

Conclusions: The results of the study revealed a need for on-going assessment of the residents past the six month integration period. Another identified need that was noted was for on-going preceptor education and consistency. The study also discovered the need to explore other methods of increasing comfort during and after their residency period.