VNSNY’s Nurse Residency Program: Intensive Training Helps Nurses ‘Go from Novice to Expert’

Recent nursing school graduate Joann Wong was looking for her next career move after a brief stint working in a nursing home. Providing nursing care to people directly in their homes appealed to her, but she felt she needed more training before making that step. “I realized I like teaching people—I like it when they go home—but I didn’t think I had enough experience to go into home care and to be on my own in that way,” she says. So when Joann saw an advertisement on a job site for VNSNY Home Care’s new nurse residency program, she applied immediately.

Today, Joann is part of the initial class of seven nurse residents who have successfully completed the first year of VNSNY’s unique two-year nurse residency. The program introduces newly graduated nurses to home care through a mix of classroom and hands-on skills training, followed by an intensive in-field mentorship program.

A longtime leader in advancing the practice of home-based care, VNSNY developed the CHHA Nurse Residency to make this growing field more accessible to new nurses. It begins with several weeks of daily classes, after which residents are sent into the field to shadow experienced nurse preceptors. Over the next six months, residents continue to attend classes weekly while their participation in clinical care increases with each home visit they make, until they’re ready to deliver care on their own. Each nurse preceptor commits to teaching and mentoring VNSNY’s nurse residents over that six months—after which they are only a phone call away for the duration of the two-year program (and quite likely well after that).

To VNSNY nurse resident Kristina-Marie Morel, the support of her preceptor, nurse Christopher Baychu, has been critical. “Entering your first nursing job as a new grad can be incredibly stressful,” says Kristina-Marie, “so having a kind and patient preceptor like Chris makes all the difference. Even though I have been out in the field on my way for quite some time now, I know that I can always reach out to Chris with any questions or for help. I’m so grateful for him and for this experience!”

For his part, says Chris, “I relished the opportunity to teach.” Chris praises Kristina-Marie for her clinical excellence, eagerness to learn and courage in treating COVID-positive patients. First, he explained, she shadowed him for a couple of weeks, then she started doing vital signs while he did the more complex care, such as wound care. Over time, she transitioned to doing the bulk of the care, before finally taking on a caseload of her own.

The interactive nurse residency curriculum covers everything from wound care and Foley catheters to the special needs of military veterans and people undergoing gender affirmation surgery. It also includes timely issues that residents bring back from the field. “Home care is different than providing care in a hospital setting, where the clinician is in control,” notes Alice Rainford-Miller, Education Manager, who designed the curriculum and teaches the classes. “In home care, we come into the patient’s space and they are in control. So in addition to learning clinical skills, our nurse residents learn to respect each patient’s environment and culture, and help patients do better in their own home and community.”

Indeed, Joann says the most invaluable lesson she learned from her preceptor, VNSNY Home Care nurse Philip Leon, was the importance of building trust. “You are going into patients’ homes, and they have to trust you to take care of them,” said Joann, who got into nursing after a career in business. “Phil showed me how important that is.”

The nurse residency program launched in March 2020, at the height of New York’s COVID-19 surge, which added a vital new component to the learning: donning and doffing of PPE. After an extra week in the classroom, armed with PPE and their new knowledge, nurse residents bravely joined their preceptors in the field. “We were so proud of them, almost like our children going off to school for the first day,” says Program Director Monica Cayemitte, who is also a Clinical Field Manager with VNSNY Home Care’s Queens Branch 3. “We knew they had the knowledge, the skills, and, increasingly, the confidence.”

Congratulations to these first seven VNSNY nurse residents: Ana Tapia, Emmanuella Decaze, Sanam Sherpa, Joann Wong, Hilary Mylon, Kristina-Marie Morel, and Lori Dong—along with their nurse preceptors: Marie Bernadel, Johane Cadet-Elie, Marco Quintero, Phil Leon, Nicole Casiano, Christopher Baychu, and Rimma Goretsky.

The second class of residents—who, like the first class, were recruited by Dian Traisci-Marandola, College Relations Manager for VNSNY Human Resources—began the program in March 2021 in a very different landscape, with COVID vaccinations rising and infections declining. But the program’s mission remains the same: “The goal is to give them time,” says Yvonne Eaddy, Regional Vice President with VNSNY Home Care. “Time to transition from the academic setting to the professional setting, to develop their critical thinking, and to go from novice to expert.”