Nurse Turnover In Nursing

Thesis: Nurse Turnover is a challenge for both hospital administration and the quality of the health care service which is being provided. As a result, it is necessary to implement strategies which increase nurse retention in health care settings.

Experienced Registered Nurse is a nurse with college/university education with one year or more of experience in a specific nursing practice area;

Nurse retention/turnover is measured as the percentage of nurses who left their position or transferred (voluntarily or not);

The status of the existing problem:

- The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) projected a nursing shortage of nearly 11 000 fulltime nurses in 2007 and 60 000 in 2022 (Lartey, Cummings & Profetto-Mcgrath, 1028);

- The hospital lose

The overall turnover changed from 11.8% 2 years before workshop year to 15.4% 1 year after;

- Such organizational characteristics as lower staffing levels, higher hospital bed size and lower quality of care are associated with higher staff turnover, and after the implementation of interventions the turnover decreased from 31.3% to 20.6% (Lartey, Cummings & Profetto-Mcgrath, 1032);

- High emotional intelligence of nurses is associated with higher level of performance, longer careers and greater job retention. Meanwhile, lower work abilities in nurses older than 45 are associated with high turnover (Lartey, Cummings & Profetto-Mcgrath, 1032);

As a result:

- Decreasing nurse turnover results in reducing of healthcare costs, staff satisfaction, safer patient’s care maintenance and stronger teams;

Conclusion:

- Such strategies as teamwork, practice models, leadership are those factors which influence the retention on the workplace;

- Still, there is not enough data on interventions for retaining experienced nurses in healthcare