The current nursing shortage and high turnover rate among nurses is a great
concern, not only for health care organizations but also for the general population.
The increase in an older population, as the “Baby Boomers” approach retirement
age will add to this shortage, leaving many to wonder who will take care of them in
their golden years. Subsequently, many of these “Baby Boomers” are nurses
themselves and will be retiring, adding to the shortage. The Current trend for
recent nursing graduates is that they do not last long on the job and the high
financial cost of rapid turnover of the nursing staff is a driving force behind the need
to effectively retain new nurses.
One article, from Nursing Economics suggest that one of the predictors to a
registered nurse remaining in nursing is scheduling. In their survey, they
questioned over 8,000 nurses in Maine. They asked them to determine the weekly
number of hours they were “hired” to work, the number of hours they “actually”
worked, the number of hours they would ideally “like” to work, and the number of
hours they work providing direct care to patients. After analyzing this data, it was
compared to the nurses’ answers on the survey of whether they planned to
continue working in the nursing profession. The result of the survey concluded that
when scheduling and hours were within the nurses’ expectations, retention of the
nurse was more likely (Andrews et.al, 2011)
After years of working in the health care field it didn’t seem unusual to me
that scheduling and hours worked played a huge impact on retention of nurses and
nurse turnover, as it can certainly influence a person’s overall well-being. However,
I never really considered the ways in which we, in the health care field or those who
are educators could enhance job satisfaction so that the retention of nurses
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