The development and implementation of a hospital based paediatric orthopaedic nursing transition program

Within Australia and the rest of the world paediatric orthopaedic nursing as a subspeciality nursing workforce faces challenges due to a lack of formal education programs that support the development of knowledge. Despite these challenges the need to ensure the availability of competent and knowledgeable nursing staff to positively contribute to health care outcomes remains unchanged. Thus a need has arisen to develop locally implemented education programs. A multi-tiered paediatric orthopaedic nursing transition program which incorporates work based learning processes combined, with formal assessment components, has been designed utilising Benner's "theory of novice to expert" to facilitate the growth of experts in the clinical setting driven by the requirements of individual clinical settings. The implementation of this program has led to increased confidence in the clinical setting for nursing staff which has positively influenced the care of children and their families in the orthopaedic service.