Newly Licensed Nurses’ Stress and Intent to Leave During a Pandemic

In early 2020, the World Health Organization designated the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic an international public health emergency (World Health Organization, 2020). As a result, several countries, including the United States, imposed restrictions and lockdown measures affecting healthcare workers including nurses and students in their final semesters of nursing education. Once hired to healthcare organizations, newly licensed nurses (NLNs) faced remote classes with less in-person support and found themselves taking care of COVID-19 patients who were critically ill (Sherman, 2021). It is therefore critical to study the experiences of NLNs during a pandemic to understand the challenges they faced and to apply the needed interventions for well-being and resilience. This study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress and intent to leave on NLNs in an accredited nurse residency program (NRP) in 2020 and 2021 as compared to 2019 before the pandemic. All NLNs are surveyed at baseline (3–4 months), 12 months, and 36months. It is hypothesized that NLNs experienced lower levels of stress with intent to leave the organization in 2019 as compared to 2020 and 2021.