Abstract
Our unit is a 12-bed medical-surgical intensive care unit in a small central Florida community. Finding experienced critical care nurses to fill vacancies is very difficult. We have offered a critical care internship for the past few years to attempt to augment our staff. Without the resources of a unit-based educator or clinical nurse specialist and with a very limited budget, we are committed to improving our internship to provide us with safe, competent critical care nurses who are willing to become members of our team. A literature review was conducted, and recommendations were developed to improve our current internship to better meet the needs of the unit and the beginning critical care nurses.