Nurse Retention Strategies in the Healthcare Industry

Nurse turnover in the healthcare industry is detrimental to the quality-of-care patients receive, organizational financial health, and nurse job satisfaction. Nurse managers who lack effective nurse retention strategies might struggle to reduce voluntary turnover, which can adversely impact nurse job satisfaction and patient care quality. Guided by the unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover and job embeddedness theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore retention strategies nurse managers use to reduce the voluntary turnover of nurses. The participants were three nurse managers at three hospitals in central and southern Illinois with proven strategies to reduce nurse turnover. Data collection included semistructured video conferencing interviews with participants and analysis of publicly available company documents and analyzed using Yin’s five qualitative data analysis stages. Three key themes emerged: employee-organization relationships and communications; benefits, rewards, and recognition; and employee engagement and participation. The key recommendation is for nurse managers to foster employee-organization relationships by implementing strategies to drive timely and effective communication. Implications for positive social change include the potential to improve quality-of-care for patients, increase organizational stability, promote nurse job satisfaction, and potentially reduce healthcare, which could benefit community members