What New Graduate Nurses Need to Know About Caring for Bariatric Patients

Purpose: Over the past 2 years, University of California at Davis Medical Center has hired 22 new graduate Registered Nurses to their Vascular and Gastrointestinal Surgery Telemetry Unit. The purpose of this paper is to describe our experience and to share what we found new graduate nurses needed to know about caring for bariatric patients. Significance: We are providing information that will be useful in orienting new graduate nurses in caring for all types of bariatric patients. There was consensus among the new graduate nurses that, while in nursing school, there was a lack of instruction in this area. Methodology: Twenty-two new graduate nurses and their managers attended a workshop called the Rising Stars in February 2011. One purpose of this workshop was to obtain direct input from the new nurses about what was needed during orientation. A survey was also administered to assess their level of knowledge pertaining to bariatric patient care. Results: The results of this workshop included the developme...