Nurse Retention: Why It Matters and Key Measures to Enhance Retention Rates

The healthcare industry exposes employees, particularly nurses, to several unique challenges. A bedside nurse, for instance, has to deal one-on-one with patients. This means that a nurse must know not only how to approach a patient but also how to handle rude patients.

Nurses navigate many challenges in their daily activities, facing unique challenges that typically answer the commonly asked question: Why is nurse retention a problem? Some of the unique health care industry challenges nurses face include:

• Managing high-stress environments: This is considering the high-pressure situations they often face in life-and-death scenarios. The pressure can significantly affect their physical and emotional well-being, causing burnout that impacts their ability to deliver high-quality care. The traumatic situations mean nurses must maintain emotional resilience, a unique challenge that, if not properly managed, increases nurse turnover rates.
• Regulatory and compliance requirements: While each industry is subject to regulatory compliance requirements, the healthcare field has stringent requirements. The field is heavily regulated, which requires nurses to be knowledgeable and adhere to the highest compliance and safety standards.
• Complex patient needs: An aging population, chronic conditions, and accidents, among other things, mean that nurses deal with increasingly complex patient needs. This means they must be skilled enough to handle the diverse needs while maintaining high patient care standards.
• Rapid advancements: The fast-paced technological advancements in the medical field require nurses to be flexible and on their toes to keep up. The field is constantly evolving, with new procedures and treatments promising to offer better patient care, requiring nurses to learn constantly.
• Health crises: Public health crises, such as natural disasters and pandemics, significantly strain medical systems. During such periods, nurses must be at their best to ensure that healthcare delivery remains consistent and effectively meets the increased demand.

Above are only a few unique challenges that may prompt you to ask: why do nurses stay? Well, the quick and short answer is that they don’t. The nursing shortage has, over the years, been a hot debate, often seen in the not-so-desirable nurse-to-patient ratio.

Healthcare organizations must implement effective strategies to improve nurse retention rates. Without an effective strategy, they’d be dealing with a massive burnout-related and voluntary turnover that could put healthcare organizations at risk of running out of practice.

You may be wondering why nurse leaders go through all the hassles to implement an effective retention strategy. The best answer can be drawn from the consideration arising from high turnover rates that result in nursing shortage, as highlighted below.

What Is the Main Problem with the Nursing Shortage?

The key problem with the nursing shortage is that it significantly compromises the quality of care to patients. Facilities struggling with nurse shortages often experience critical issues that result in poor services, which can be interpreted as side effects.

What Are the Side Effects of Nursing Shortages?

Higher Workload

A stretched-thin nursing workforce has to cover extra shifts and deal with an already challenging nurse-to-patient ratio. This usually translates to longer patient wait times, significantly impacting quality of care and patient satisfaction rates. The workload increases burnout among nurses, which further worsens turnover rates.

Declining Patient Safety

A shortage of nurses translates to increasing patient-to-nurse ratios. This makes it harder for the front-line nurses to deliver the necessary attention to every patient, which can result in delayed care and create a huge room for errors. This significantly impacts patient care quality and could even expose healthcare institutions to numerous lawsuits for medical malpractice.

Patient safety is a huge concern, more so given the critical nature of healthcare services. A small error like a medication mix up could result in the loss of a patient’s life and cost the organization a fortune while tainting its reputation. This underscores the importance of mitigating nurse turnover to maintain adequate staffing levels.

Team Morale

The nurse shortage results in added pressure in an already high-stress environment. This worsens burnout among nurses as they have to take on extra responsibilities. The impact is usually a decline in morale, which increases turnover rates and ignites a vicious cycle that could perpetuate a long-term shortage.

Costly Operations

Recruiting, training, and onboarding nurses can be quite costly. This situation worsens when there’s a nurse shortage to mentor new hires and pass on critical skills and institutional knowledge. Declining morale further affects the culture of teamwork that’s needed for better productivity in any organization.

The concerns combined increase the chances of nurse turnover, meaning a temporary shortage can trigger a long-term shortage. This makes it even more costly to operate a healthcare facility, considering the ongoing recruitment costs and the many risks associated with the shortage.

Nurse shortage is evidently a menace that healthcare institutions must strive to conquer.  One of the most effective ways to facilitate adequate staffing levels in this field is nurse retention. Nurse retention helps maintain quality patient care through experienced professionals. It also reduces the financial burden of turnover and fosters positive organizational cultures and teamwork.

Employee retention also helps train and mentor graduate nurses. This is because experienced nurses equip new hires to better care for patients. All this doesn’t end at the patient level. It extends to better employee satisfaction rates, which improve workplace morale and can help lower voluntary turnover rates further.

Managing Nursing Shortage with an Effective Retention Strategy

Healthcare workers must possess certain skills and qualities. A successful nursing profession, for instance, takes more than academic qualification, which is why it is often said to be a calling. A nurse has to care for and about others; sometimes, they even do it more than they care for themselves.

What are the qualities of a good nurse? As nurse leaders, this bracket takes into account more than academic milestones. This is why, when considering how to overcome nursing shortage, retention is the most practical solution.

What Does Retention Mean in Staffing?

Retention entails an organization’s ability to hold on to its best talents for an extended period. High retention means that the employees stick around for a long period. On the other hand, low retention also referred to as high turnover, means that employees frequently leave the organization, which necessitates continual hiring and training.

Retention of nurses helps manage the side effects of the nursing shortage highlighted above. That’s because an organization keeps experienced nurses for an extended period, which facilitates mentorship and knowledge transfer, more cost-effective operations, and higher patient care quality.

Experienced nurse retention isn’t that straightforward, though. It takes the right approach since the nurse shortage means such professionals are in high demand and can easily be poached by organizations offering better work environments. Below, we’ll look at some of the effective nurse retention strategies that can help keep experienced professionals in an organization and address shortage concerns.

Nurse Retention Strategies for Adequate Staffing

What is a retention strategy? In its simplest definition, retention strategy entails an organization's approach to keeping employees engaged, committed, and satisfied. This increases their likelihood of staying with the organization in the long run.

Effective nurse retention strategies typically entail tailored measures to meet the healthcare workforce's needs, which can be a combination of diverse policies and workplace practices. Here is a quick look at some of the effective measures that can help healthcare leaders develop practical retention strategies.

Forward-thinking Recruitment

Did you know that over 15% of nurses leave their first job within one year? One of the main reasons for this high turnover is that the nurse might not feel comfortable within the organization. They may feel out of sync with the institution’s culture, which prompts them to seek other opportunities.

Forward-thinking recruitment can help reduce the high early turnover by attracting the right candidates and offering better onboarding experiences. The experiences of nurses dictate how well they progress in an institution, which the recruitment process can greatly shape.

For instance, by implementing programs that support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the recruitment phase, healthcare institutions can build an inclusive team where every nurse feels welcome. This can be complemented by programs and policies designed to build a cohesive team early on, making it easier for graduate nurses to fit right into the organization.

Such measures mean nurses can quickly find their feet and identity in an organization, feel appreciated, and associate with the institution. The measures create a positive organizational culture where nurses aren’t overwhelmed by new experiences but rather work together in a friendlier environment. This means they are likelier to stick around longer, especially since job satisfaction rates in such positive environments are high.

The bottom line is that forward-thinking recruitment and onboarding set the newly hired nurse on the right path. The process eliminates many hiccups early in nurse careers that often tempt them to voluntary leave in search of more fulfilling roles, allowing healthcare establishments to hire and retain the best talents.

Invest in Leadership Programs

Are nurse managers in your institution equipped to lead the front-line nursing staff? Lack of effective leadership could be the main culprit behind high nurse turnover rates. Effective nurse leaders inspire a positive workplace culture. They are respectful and genuinely care for their teams, encouraging nurses to push beyond their boundaries.

Investing in leadership development programs can help nurture influential leaders across the board. This way, healthcare organizations wouldn’t struggle to find the transformative leaders needed to help nurses navigate chaotic instances that often occur in their field. They’d have “home-grown” leaders who understand the unique challenges in the field, particularly the organization and its culture, which is essential in steering the nurses in the right direction.

Provide Clear Career Progression Paths

Does your organization provide career nurses with paths they can transition to, or do they feel trapped in one area? Professional development is among the most effective employee retention strategies.

For instance, bedside nursing may be fulfilling in early career years. However, such an employee might want to advance into managerial roles that perhaps they associate with better job security, compensation, and working conditions.

Implementing clear professional development paths enhances employee engagement as they feel that there is a way for them to grow and scale their career ladders. The improved engagement enhances overall productivity and helps keep the employees glued to the organization for a long period.

Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits Package

Imagine a nurse who can barely meet their financial needs; what are the chances that they’ll be driven to deliver better patient care? Demand for nurses is consistently growing, and with it, their “price tag,” which means your institution must offer competitive compensation to attract and retain the best talent.

Besides healthy salaries and bonuses, it’s also critical that you consider the benefits package. This should be in line with the nurses' needs. For instance, how do nurses manage stress? Does your organization offer benefits such as free mental health services and support that help nurses manage emotional exhaustion? Including such a benefit in their package can go a long way in enhancing job satisfaction as they feel valued. Other non-salary benefits that can enhance satisfaction and nurse retention rates are:

• Health and wellness programs
• Education and career development benefits
• On-site child care
• Cross-training programs
• Sign-on and retention bonuses
• Flexible scheduling for better work-life balance
• Commuter benefits
• Relocation allowance

The trick is to offer tailored benefits for nurses beyond the basics. This way, they’ll enjoy working in your organization and won’t easily be tempted to leave in search of greener pastures, considerably increasing retention rates.

Think About Mentorship Programs

Mentoring is an effective way to pass organizational knowledge from experienced nurses to graduate nurses. Nurse mentorship programs are a career development tool that has stood the test of time and repeatedly proven its effectiveness in enhancing workplace culture and job satisfaction.

Effective mentoring programs do not just help graduate nurses. Mentorship also equips experienced nurses with current skills, such as in reverse mentoring programs. These programs pair experienced nurses with fresh graduates, where they learn new technologies and advancements, among other changes in the field. This helps bridge the potential generational gap that could impact service delivery.

The best part about the mentoring programs is that they facilitate a smooth transition, such as from academic settings to real-world clinical practice or bedside nursing to managerial roles. Such transition further enhances job satisfaction and nurse retention rates because they feel supported and connected within the organization. Personal support, for instance, significantly alleviates the emotional exhaustion nurses experience in the challenging profession, which contributes to high turnover rates.

Overall, mentorship programs facilitate professional development across the board. They empower clinical nurses by offering support and guidance in the complex and high-stress field. The nurses gain clinical practice skills that boost their confidence and enable them to be critical thinkers and better decision-makers in high-pressure situations.

Experienced nurses also benefit by discovering emerging trends, which helps them stay updated and offer better services. The interactions also help foster a better workplace culture, such as where the junior-level and chief nursing officer learn and work together, creating a better bond.

Such relationships enhance communication and trust within healthcare organizations, which is critical in managing the sensitive nature of the delivered services. Moreover, the programs nurture future nurse leaders, which facilitates organizational continuity.

Grow Your Employees’ Career and Enhance Retention with Qooper

While effective career development and employee retention tools, developing practical mentoring programs can be challenging. Matching the mentors to the right mentees and managing the training, guidance, tracking, and reporting, among other aspects, can take a toll on your team.

That’s where Qooper Mentoring Software comes in, taking all the manual work off your hands for a streamlined mentoring program from start to finish. Qooper employs a smart matching algorithm and intuitive tools for efficient mentoring programs’ development, execution, and tracking, which can easily be scaled up or down per your unique needs.

The Takeaway

An effective nurse retention strategy is a game-changer that can give your organization an edge in the demanding healthcare industry. It’s all about offering the nurses, the heart and soul of the healthcare system, the much-needed support and resources to manage their demanding jobs. This way, they’ll represent the organization in the best way possible, which not only helps improve the community’s health and well-being. It also facilitates patient retention, which is essential for long-term success.

A key ingredient for effective nurse retention strategies is mentorship programs, which facilitate career development and personal growth. Combined with innovative benefits packages, competitive salaries, flexible scheduling, and forward-thinking measures, your organization can easily attract, hire, and retain nurses with the best qualities.

Let Qooper help you get there with effective mentoring programs regardless of your organization’s size or shape. Schedule a demo today to experience the power of mentoring programs for employee growth and nurse retention.