The article by Linda Ferguson is concerned about the challenges that new nursing graduates encounter in the new environment of work especially in the first six months. The article focuses on the challenges the new environment presents, in particular the evidence based practice. Making clinical judgments is the predominant predicament of the fresh graduates because they have to integrate the theory to practice.

Summary of the article:

The article “Challenges for new nurses in evidence-based practice” addresses the issues of the predicament that faces fresh graduates when they enter the workplace. The new graduate in the workplace appears unprepared and overwhelmed by the demands of the job giving an expression inadequacy in skills to handle the daunting task. The new demands that have been set up by the requirements for evidence based care has toughened the challenges for the new nurses. Ferguson argues that the emphasis of focusing on the client values in the practice has posed new challenges to the fresh graduates in the workplace. The fact that the new graduate requires to make a clinical judgment in applying theory to practice is a new set of challenges. The author advises on adopting strategies to support new graduates as they enter the job market.

Summary of the article:

The article concludes by recognizing that the problem of integration of fresh graduates is a major issue in the profession which needs to be addressed with the required urgency. The author recommends sensitizing the practicing nurses to model the new graduates.

Personal reflection: Challenges for fresh graduates in the new environment.

The graduates who have left school enters the market with an innocence of the classroom having not had the authority of running a whole ward, and being the very advocate of the patient. Nursing is about making judgments. The first challenge the nurses meet is the issue of clinical judgment. They have the knowledge, but they have a challenge of when, and where to use the knowledge. Coupled with the issues of making clinical judgment, is the issue of evidence based practice. The fresh graduate must have a rationale for every action they take for the patient. Providing evidence for everything they do for the patient, and further interpreting the rationale scientifically, poses a challenge for them.

Lack of confidence in the new environment is also a challenge that the new graduates experiences. In the classroom, the graduates learnt theory and did practicals with dummies. In the new environment, the new nurse has to deal with real patients. Connecting between the way they practiced with the dummies and the real patient becomes a problem to many. This makes them lack confidence as attend the patients.

The changing environment has come with new demands from the patients. The present-day patient is an informed person. They tend to have specific values and preferences. The new graduate experiences a challenge of dealing with an informed client who has specific preferences. Some procedures will require the new graduates to think critically and solve them. This has been a challenge to some of the fresh graduate. The challenges have also been worsened by the lack of role models. This is because nursing work is very demanding meaning that many qualified nurses may not allocate some time to teach the new graduates. With these strategies should be adopted to support the transition period.