Donna, the program that you developed sounds like a great model that could be used by other nursing units in both long term and acute care settings, and I applaud your efforts. All too often, and for reasons I do not understand, nurses do tend to eat their own. My employer does have similar programs for nurses and nursing assistant staff. We also provide for a day of job shadowing to allow applicants the time and experience to understand what their role will be on each unit of the acute care hospital before they accept the position. Tilden et al., 2012 also link all levels of nursing staff turnover rates in long term care facilities to the quality of end-of-life care provided by the facility. This could also be related to staffing ratios
