Need Nurses? Not Us!

Purpose:
Retention of nursing staff has become a top priority nationwide.

Significance:
When a clinical area loses an experienced nurse, they lose an expert resource that cannot simply be replaced with a new nurse. Staff turnover affects patient outcomes, morale, and safe staffing. Our unit recognized these impacts and developed a plan.

Strategy and Implementation:
The goal was to increase the number of experienced nurses on our unit, decrease voluntary turnover, and increase consistency of care by retaining experienced nurses. Our unit council decided to focus on one item from the NDNQI nurse survey: Job Enjoyment Scale. In addition, we focused on one item from our employee opinion survey: I am satisfied with the recognition I receive for doing a good job. The lack of recognition and appreciation leads to dissatisfaction and decreasing morale. The unit council felt this was an issue they could address. In 2006, the nurses rated the job enjoyment scale at 39.71 (<40 indicates low satisfaction). Our employee opinion survey rating was at 2.78 (1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree). Our overall hospital rating was 3.53. In addition, our voluntary turnover rate was 6.9%. Our goal was to improve our unit rating on these items and decrease our turnover rate. The plan included:

Evaluation:
1). Enhancing our teamwork, 2). Maintaining a family-style approach of nursing, 3). Utilizing the compassion of the staff, 4). Creating unique and fun ways to recognize staff, 5). Encouraging open communication between staff and management, and 6). Finding creative ways to staff the unit.

Implications for Practice:
As a result, in 2008, we were able to achieve a 0% voluntary turnover rate on our inpatient unit, our September 2008 employee opinion re-survey listed a rating for the above question as 4.2, and our 2008 NDNQI job enjoyment scale listed a rate of 54.61.