Addressing Wellbeing in Novice Nurse Practitioners: A DNP Project Report

Nurse practitioners (NPs) provide care for more complex patients than ever, and novice nurse practitioners are at increased risk of burnout. NP residency programs are increasing in popularity for new graduate nurse practitioners to ease the transition in to full professional practice and address provider wellbeing. This quality improvement project aimed to understand how participation in a NP residency program related to wellbeing. The scores from a Mini Z 2.0 survey conducted at a Federally Qualified Health Center in the Southwestern United States were compared between NPs, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Psychiatric NPs, with less than five years of experience who completed a residency (n= 12) and those who did not (n= 9). Neither the residency group nor the no-residency group met the Joyful Workplace standard, but the residency group had a mean score of 31.7 and the non-residency group had a mean score of 29.1. Neither group met the Supportive Work Environment standard or the Reasonable Work Pace and Manageable EHR Stress standard. However, a greater difference in means between the two groups was noted with the residency group scoring 2.5 points higher in Supportive Work Environment. Themes from both groups in the open-ended question on the Mini Z survey included concerns about workload demands, charting difficulties, and interprofessional difficulties. There appears to be an advantage in participating in a NP residency, especially in having a supportive work environment, but there are common struggles for novice NPs regardless of residency completion, such as workload and charting demands.