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Recently, nurse residency programs have been shown to improve satisfaction and enhance the retention of new graduate nurses, offering one solution for hospital executives, administrators, and managers searching for innovative ways to address nursing staff shortages. This article identifies crucial lessons that will assist leaders in designing and implementing a nurse residency program in their own institutions. The lessons are drawn from the experience of the successful University of Utah program. Four important practical components of such programs are described: an adaptive curriculum, promotion of autonomy, mentoring, and meeting the needs of participants with associate degrees. Although the lessons are based on the perspective of one nurse residency program, they hold import for the design of nurse residency programs in diverse settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]