Dear Friends,
In this month’s newsletter we will share more of HIGN’s innovative work. We have developed an online nurse residency program for nurses who are new to long-term care.
For more than a decade, nurse residency programs have been used in acute care to help new nurses acclimate to their roles as bedside nurses in that environment. Most nursing students have limited, if any, experience in the role of the nurse in long-term care. As a result, they either do not see long-term care as an option when seeking employment or, if they do, they often become disenchanted because they learn that the care is so much more than “custodial”. Nursing in long-term care is caring for people with complex comorbidities and often with dementia as well. There are no protocols as each resident is unique. There are limited physicians or nurse practitioners to appear within minutes when a resident appears to be in crisis. It is an environment where a nurse with strong critical thinking skills and a passion for caring for older adults can thrive.
We first launched the Nurse Residency Program in Long-Term Care as an in-person, 9 month training in the Fall of 2019 with 12 nurses. Covid-19 started to spread in early 2020 and the residency program became lost in the myriad of new priorities that the pandemic created. In 2023, we received funding from the Mother Cabrini Foundation to develop the curriculum as an online program to facilitate access to and flexibility with the learning process.
The program was piloted at 7 long-term care communities with 2 cohorts consisting of 34 nurses. The curriculum includes 6 professional development courses, 12 clinical courses, and 8 case studies. In addition, 11 preceptors were trained with 6 online courses covering topics such as mentoring, bullying, and communication. Our retention rate with the first cohort was 80% and the second cohort was 90%. The Casey-Fink Professional Nurse Survey, competency rating scales, and preceptor evaluations were used to assess the outcomes of the program. The outcomes were so encouraging that the 7 long-term care communities have committed to the continuation of this program with a new cohort every 6 months.
HIGN’s Nurse Residency Program in Long-Term Care prepares new nurses with the skills and confidence they need to work in this complex environment while also developing the skills of senior nurses in providing mentorship and support to new nurses. Long-term care has a national annual turnover rate in nursing that averages around 45%. We are excited about the potential of this program to help reduce that turnover and increase the capacity of nursing and quality in long-term care.
For more information, visit our website.
Best,
Tara
Tara A. Cortes, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA
Leadership Course: Free for October
For the month of October, we are offering the Creating a Culture of Respect and High Performance course from our Leadership series for free. This course will help leaders address incivility in the workplace and successfully create a safe, healthy, and supportive working environment.
Nursing Continuing Professional Development contact hours are available for this course.
Use the promo code oct25 (case sensitive) to view until the end of October
The NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing Center for Nursing Continuing Professional Development is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation (Provider # P0367)
Let food be long-term care residents’ medicine
Laura Peralta is a 2025 NYU Meyers graduate and HIGN Scholar whose piece on the importance of culturally relevant food in nursing homes was a guest column in McKnight’s. Her column argues that by investing in culturally competent nutrition, facilities can enhance satisfaction and improve resident outcomes. Click here to read the full column.
Your facility needs to implement cognitive stimulation programs
This McKnight’s guest column, written by 2025 NYU Meyers graduate and HIGN Scholar Valeria Manent, emphasizes the importance of cognitive stimulation in nursing homes. Research shows that these low-tech, low-cost programs improve residents’ mood, memory and quality of life, particularly though with dementia or mild cognitive impairment. Click here to read the full column.
HIGN Highlights
Honors: Prof. Chenjuan Ma is on this year’s Stanford/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientists list under the nursing category (or top 2% nursing scientists list). Prof. Komal Morali received the 2025 Rising Star Award from the NYU Meyers Alumni Association. Presentations: Prof. Dorothy Wholihan presented at this year’s ELNEC National Summit in Chicago. Awards: Prof. Daniel David received a Hillman Emergent Innovation grant his study “Enhancing Serious Illness Discussions for Low-Income Residents in Assisted Living Prof. Christine Spalink received a Teaching Advancement Grant from NYU entitled “Improving Student and Faculty Engagement through Integration of Neuroaesthetics and Cognitive Neuroscience in Curriculum Development and Implementation: A Project to Support Innovative Teaching and Learning” Prof. Allison Squires received an R25 from the NIH for “Advancing Research Education on the Health of New Americans (REHNA)” Publications: Lassell R.K.F., Muruganand A., Gan A., Fletcher J., Lin S.Y., Brody A.A. (2025). Utilization of Occupational and Physical Therapy Home Health Visits Among People Living With Dementia With Varying Social Determinants of Health. J Am Med Dir Assoc. Lim, F. & Godfrey, N. (2025). Everyday ethics: Addressing gun violence. American Nurse. Lim, F. A. (2025). What a résumé can’t tell you about a nurse. American Nurse. Blog. September 16, 2025. Ma, C., Liang, E., Hu, M., & Squires, A. (2025). Hitting or missing healthcare expectations of Chinese immigrants with language barriers. Journal of Asian Health. Fernandez Cajavilca, M., Sadarangani, T., Squires, A., Wu, B. (2025). Barriers to timely dementia diagnosis in older Latinos with limited English proficiency. Journal of Transcultural Nursing. Liu, R., Luo, H., Qi, X., Xu, Z., Wu, B. (2025) Edentulism, Social Mobility, and Cognitive Aging: A Life Course Perspective. The Journals of Gerontology. Dong, Q., Wu, W., Jiang, Y., Sui, J., Tan, C., Qi, X. (2025). Machine Learning Approaches to Racial/Ethnic Differences in Social Determinants of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Its Progression to Dementia in the All of Us Research Program. The Journals of Gerontology. Scher, C.J., Anderson, K., Zagorski, W., Siamdoust, S., Li, Y., & Sadarangani, T. (2025). “We feel like a family here”: person-centered outcomes of adult day services use from the voices of people living with dementia and their caregivers. BMC Health Serv Res. Engel, P., Vorensky, M., Squires, A., & Jones, S. (2025). Using interpersonal continuity of care in home health physical therapy to reduce hospital readmissions. Home Health Care Management & Practice. Sliwinski, K., McHugh, M. D., Squires, A.P., Jane Muir, K., & Lasater, K. B. (2025). Nurse work environment and hospital readmission disparities between patients with and without limited English proficiency. Research in Nursing & Health. Van Cleave, J. H., Guerra, A., Liang, E., Gutiérrez, C., Karni, R. J., Tsikis, M., Nguyen, G. P. C., & Squires, A. P. (2025). Using content validity index methodology for cross-cultural translation of a patient-reported outcome measure for head and neck cancer. Frontiers in Health Services. Mukhopadhyay, A., Ladino, N., Stokes, T., Narendrula, A., Katz, S.D., Reynolds, H.R., Squires, A.P., Wadhera, R.K., Zhang, D.S., Adhikari, S., and Blecker, S. Impact of Heart Failure Guideline Publication on Medicare Drug Coverage Policies: A Quasi‐Experimental Analysis. JAHA. Greenlee, M., Wu, B., Sun, M., Chen, K., Jia, W., Zweig, S., Melkus, G., Parekh, N., Zheng, Y. Experience of Using Wearable Devices for Dietary Management for Chinese Americans With Type 2 Diabetes: One-Group Prospective Cohort Study. (2025). JMIR Diabetes.
HIGN at NYU Meyers | 433 First Avenue Fifth Floor | New York, NY 10010 US