News: Nurse survey shows improvements in 2023, retention still an issue
The percentage of nurses planning to leave their position fell from 39.1% in 2022 to 32% in 2023, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, though things such as planned departure rates, abusive or violent events, and unsafe conditions remained high. Also, 41.8% of respondents intended to leave their current employer but remain in nursing, with workload as the most commonly cited reason (29.4%), MedPage Today reported.
Survey data was gathered from 9,000 nurses who worked in Michigan in 2022 and 7,000 in 2023, showing a year-over-year decrease in workplace abuse or violence reported (43.4% versus 50.2%), understaffed shifts (41% versus 48.2%), and use of mandatory overtime (11.7% versus 18.7%). Also, 7% of nurses wanted to pursue travel nursing in 2023, compared to 18.1% in 2022, 18% planned to reduce their clinical hours in 2023, compared to 27.9% in 2022, and 11.2% reported that their practice environment was unfavorable as opposed to 16.9% in 2022.
Researchers noted there was little change in the share of nurses who reported that they were either dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with their current position across the 2022 and 2023 cohorts (26.5% and 28.2%, respectively). They did point to a pattern of high rates of job dissatisfaction and intention to leave specifically among nurses ages 34 and younger, however.
“These are the folks who have potentially decades of time left to practice nursing, and losing them early is a particularly bad sign that hasn't been accounted for in some economic modeling,” said Christopher R. Friese, PhD, RN, AOCN, of the University of Michigan School of Nursing in Ann Arbor, one of the study co-authors. “So, we have to think about strategies that allow nurses to care for the appropriate number of patients for their clinical setting, and that, our data says, is not the norm in 2023.”
Editor’s note: To read MedPage Today’s coverage of this story, click here. To read the JAMA study, click here.