Recruitment of the senior nursing student into long -term care: A comparison of the Realistic Job Preview and the Best -Foot -Forward presentation techniques

The shortage of nurses in the United States has reached a critical level and will be exacerbated as the Baby Boomer generation ages and begins to require Long-Term Care (LTC) services. One solution to this problem is the recruitment of new nursing graduates directly into the field of LTC nursing. The purpose of this study was to explore the image of LTC nursing held by senior nursing students and to examine the relationship between senior nursing students' image of LTC and their intent to apply for a position in a LTC organization. In addition, the effect of two recruitment presentation styles (interventions), Realistic Job Preview (RJP) and the Best-Foot-Forward (BFF) approach, on the senior nursing students' perception of LTC nursing was examined. One hundred and one senior-level students participated in the study. Results revealed that senior nursing students rated LTC nursing image the lowest, scored LTC nursing as having the least amount of nursing-program emphasis, and regarded LTC nursing as the most unlikely area of nursing in which they would pursue a job post graduation, compared to other areas of nursing practice studied. The study also demonstrated that students with a more positive image of LTC nursing are more likely to apply for a job in this field than students with a less positive image of LTC nursing. As compared to the pre-intervention LTC nursing image scores, there was a significant increase in RJP and BFF students' image scores post intervention. Although the mean image score was higher for the BFF group than for the RJP group, the effect size of the RJP intervention was of greater magnitude than the effect size of the BFF intervention. Neither the RJP intervention nor the BFF intervention had a significant impact on the students' intent to seek a position in LTC nursing and the intervention's effect sizes were small. It is recommended that nursing educators increase the exposure of student nurses to LTC, revealing both the positive and negative aspects of the field, enabling LTC providers to successfully recruit new graduate nurses.