Protocol for a Case Study to Explore the Transition to Practice of New Graduate Nurses in Long-Term Care

A qualitative case study protocol for an exploration of the transition to practice of new graduate nurses in long-term care is presented. For the new graduated nurse, the transition to professional practice is neither simple nor easy. This time of transition has been examined within the hospital setting, but little work has been done from the perspective and context of long-term care. As the global population continues to age and the acuity of persons accessing services outside of hospital continues to increase, there is a need to better understand the transition experience of new graduate nurses in alternative, tertiary settings such as long-term care. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to situate a study and describe a protocol that explored the transition to practice experience of seven new graduate nurses in long-term care using Yin’s case study methodology. The case or phenomenon being explored is new graduate nurse transition to practice. This report presents an overview of the literature in order to situate and describe the case under study, a thorough description of the binding of the case as well as the data sources utilized, and ultimately reflects upon the lessons learned using this methodology. The lessons learned include challenges related to precise case binding, the role and importance of context in conducting case study research, and difficulties in disseminating study findings. Overall, this report provides a detailed example of the application of the case study design through description of a study protocol in order to facilitate learning about this complex and often improperly utilized study design.