Preparing Newly Licensed Associate Degree Nurses to Work in Home Health Care

Abstract

This article describes an innovative learning program, designed for associate degree nurse (ADN) graduates, developed at the visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) to expand its hiring pool of potential applicants to home health care nursing positions. The program, “Transitions to Home Health Care,” provides a strong emphasis on independent judgment, assessment skills, and collaboration with other professions and resources outside the home health care agency. In view of the expanding number of ADN graduates and the increasing competition for a limited number of new bachelor of science in nursing (BSN), VNSNY developed and is testing a model that combines a specially designed one-year didactic educational course and a clinical practice internship program to prepare new ADN graduates to work in the home health care field at a level more comparable to that of BSN graduates. To date, VNSNY has had preliminary success with this new approach.