News: 40% of nurses intend to leave the workforce within the next 5 years, survey indicates
Over the next five years, about 40% of participants indicated their intention to leave the workforce in the 2024 National Nursing Workforce study, which was recently published by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). Since 2022, the report stated that 138,000 nurses have already left the workforce. When asked why they intend to leave, participants cited five main reasons, HealthLeaders reported.
The report surveyed 800,000 nurses, and the data showed that stress and burnout, workload, understaffing, inadequate salary, and workplace violence were the top reasons that nurses are leaving.
Phil Dickison, CEO of NCSBN, told HealthLeaders, “Every one of those numbers is a voice, it is not simply a number on a page. My argument is that [as leaders] we need to be better about […] listening to these voices of the nurses before we invoke solutions.”
He also stated that more data is necessary to determine which of these problems are more of an issue in certain departments than others. “We need to find this out because we're doing correlations now, but maybe there's better correlations that stress is higher in those areas,” Dickison said. “Intuitively […] we might believe that, but is it true? And if it is true, then what are the causes of stress in that area?”
On the other hand, the data showed that 88% of registered nurses and 71% of licensed practical nurses and vocational nurses are actively involved in nursing, which is a small rebound in employment levels since the height of the pandemic.
The study also found that the median age of the nurse workforce went up as experienced nurses begin to return to the workforce, and 73% of participants hold a baccalaureate degree or higher, which is the highest amount that NCSBN has ever documented. Nurses are experiencing a 10%-16% increase in median pre-tax income, and the number of Hispanic and Latino nurses has doubled to 7.2% since 2015.
Editor’s note: To read HealthLeaders’ coverage of this story, click here. To access the NCSBN report, click here.