Essay On Nurse Retention

The current and growing shortage of nurses is posing a real threat to the ability of hospitals, long-term care facilities, and others to provide timely access to quality care. Nurse staffing shortages and nurse turn-over contributes to the growing reduction in the number of staffed patient beds available for services, increasing costs, and rising concerns about the quality of care. Health care organizations highly depend on nurse managers and leaders to reverse this trend. This paper discusses the reasons for nursing shortage and turn-over, different approaches to solve this issue, and my personal philosophy about this issue.

There are many major challenges facing the nursing shortage environment today. One of those challenges includes the facility recruitment of registered nurses and then the facility retention of the registered nurses that they have recruited. Factors to consider would be as to why a registered nurse chose to accept a particular job and will they choose to stay at the facility after being given an employment opportunity. A facility’s reputation, union status, autonomy and salary are among some of the factors that influence recruitment. Factors that influence retention includes the inclusion in decision making, practice

According to an article submitted by Rosenfeld, 2009, the growing trends of an aging population require the need for more nursing services. In addition, there are insufficient numbers of facilities to train new nurses (Rosenfeld, 2009). The above issues pertaining to nursing shortages have created what is called a “nursing crisis” which have caused and will continue to cause dramatic shortages on a national basis.

According to Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt School of Nursing who has studied the problem on staff shortage. “Nursing care in America's hospitals has reached a critical shortage -- the worst in 50 years.”(1)

There are many challenges facing today’s nursing leaders and managers. From staffing and scheduling, to budget cuts and reduced reimbursements, today’s nursing leaders must evolve to meet the ever changing health care environment. Constance Schmidt, Chief Nursing Officer at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC), identified retaining experienced registered nurses (RN) as one of the biggest problems she faces as a nursing leader. She went on to state “Nationally, most hospitals have more than 60% of their nurses with at least 5 years of experience. At CRMC, it’s the reverse. We have more than 60% of our nurses with less than 5 years of experience” (personal communication, March 28, 2014). The two largest factors affecting those numbers are the nursing shortage and nursing retention. The first, the nursing shortage, was identified years ago and has been researched countless times. Some projections indicate the number representing the gap between available registered nurses, and the positions needing to be filled, could be over a million before the end of the current decade. The latter, retention of nurses, is a problem in every health care facility in the nation. Nursing turnover results in both a significant financial cost to hospitals, and a significant impact on the community through its effects on patient outcome.

The American healthcare system is severely impacted by the shortage of nursing personnel. According to the American Nurses Association (2014), the nursing shortage has compromised patient safety, patient care and patient health outcomes. The nursing shortage can also cause medical errors, result in fatigue, injury and job dissatisfaction. The nursing shortage has been influenced by several factors. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that influence nursing shortage in the U.S, present two strategies to address the issue and my personal recommendation.

The nursing profession has experienced shortages many times in the past. This pattern was cyclical, with periods of high vacancy rates followed by layoffs and an oversupply of registered nurses. Today, we are experiencing another drought for nursing, but due to many factors, this shortage is different from anything the profession has witnessed in previous years. There are many that feel this shortage is severe and prolonged because the solution is complicated, and not simply a matter of a decrease in the number of registered nurses in the United States.

With the ongoing changes in the healthcare field, nursing workforce retention presents itself as one of the greatest challenges facing healthcare systems today. According to the American Nursing Association, nursing turnover is a multi-faceted issue which impacts the financial stability of the facility, the quality of patient care and has a direct affect on the other members of the nursing staff (ANA, 2014). The cost to replace a nurse in a healthcare facility ranges between $62,100 to $67,100 (ANA, 2014). The rising problem with nursing retention will intensify the nursing shortage, which has been projected to affect the entire nation, not just isolated areas of the country, gradually increasing in its scope from 2009 to 2030 (Rosseter,

We hear nurse’s talk about how rewarding their profession is but what they seldom talk about is how it can be very challenging as well. There seems to be many issues existing in the nursing profession. One of the most affective issues in nursing is the decreasing number of staff nurses. With inadequate staffing, nurses are demanded to have more responsibilities thus causing more stress on the nurse. This increase in responsibility causes nurses to neglect many aspects of their patients’ care. Patient care is suffering from the shortage of nurses as there is an increase in adverse patient outcomes due to the shortage. Also, there is evidence that there is a positive relationship between the number of staff and the effectiveness of their teamwork. The more staff available the more likely nurses will work together as a team. A new act is being implemented to help with the nursing shortage. This act is called the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of nursing shortage and how the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act is an example of evidence-based practice.

Nursing shortage has been a global problem that need to be eradicated in order to promote patient care and improve care outcomes. Nursing shortage in America has caused a lot of negative impact on the nurses, patients and nursing profession. It has caused a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of the nurses and the patients (Nardi & Gyurko, 2013). Nurses are prone to injuries, stress and burn-out as a result of nursing shortages. They engaged in working long hours to compensate their coworkers and ensure completion of assigned jobs. They end up breaking down emotionally, physically and psychologically due to poor work-environment and

The nursing shortage in healthcare has been a highlighted issue for many years. With the ever-growing health care system, hospitals and healthcare facilities often find themselves searching for ways to acquire new nurses and retain their very own. Throughout the years, the number one solution to this problem remains the same: decreasing nurse turnover, and increasing nurse retention. This paper discusses the causes of high nurse turnover rate, the negative effects on health care, and ways to improve the turnover rate.

Nurse turnover is defined as “the number of nurses changing jobs within an organization or leaving an organization within a given year” (Baumann 2010). Retaining nurses is one of the most important issues in health care as its effects range from challenges in human resource planning, to high costs in financial and organizational productivity (Beecroft et al, 2008), to workgroup processes and morale, to patient safety and quality of care (i.e. patient satisfaction, length of patient stay, patient falls, and medication errors) (Bae et al, 2010). Nursing Solutions Inc (NSI) reported the national average turnover rate for hospitals increased from 13.5% in 2012 to 14.7% last year. Nurses working in Med/Surg had more turnover

The demand for full time nurses is continuing to boom in the global market (Buerhaus, Auerbach, & Staiger, 2009). However, the unfortunate shortage of nurses in the global scenario is undeniable (Hunt, 2009). The rate at which nurses are graduating from universities today does not sufficiently quench the ever growing demand for nursing professionals. The issue of providing an active replacement for the nurses who have left their respective organization continues to be a source of main concern for health care institutions.

The ongoing instability evidenced from the high mobility of qualified nurses in the nursing workforce has raised many questions about the issue of nursing shortage and nurse turnover (Gates & Jones, 2007). The paper below discusses the issues of nursing shortage and nurse turnover. The paper also describes how leaders as well as managers in the nursing fraternity and other leaders can resolve those problems effectively and the different applicable principles, skills, roles of the leader, and theories of leadership and management.

Recruitment of registered nurses is invaluable for any health care facility. When vacancy rates reach high digits, the cost to the facility is significant,