Top 5 Strategies to Retain New Nurses in Your Healthcare Facility

With healthcare facilities nationwide experiencing nursing shortages, there is an urgent need for more comprehensive staffing strategies. With 22% nurse turnover nationally and recruitment efforts alone only managing to retain 20%, nurse retention strategies must go beyond simply recruiting efforts, specifically for nurses who may feel pressured to leave after just a couple of years on the nursing job.

Institutions should take proactive steps to make new nurses feel welcome as they transition into the workforce. Here, we discuss some reasons new nurses might leave early-career practical nursing fields and how to retain new nurses for keeping early-career nurses.

Summary and Statistics on New Nurse Turnover | Nurse Retention and Staffing Report

Experienced nurses early in their careers are leaving at an increased rate than more seasoned as per NSI National Health Care Retention and Staffing Report; 20-22% leave after two or three years compared to only 1-13% among vocational nurses with five+ years hands-on experience.

Retention of New Graduate Nurses

It is clear from the statistics that nurse retention rates during their early career stages are subpar, but improvement is coming soon. Institutions need to understand why graduates remain away from patient beds; often, this leads to the following report from hospitals about them being fired:

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As we discussed the potential factors causing shifts among nurses in 2019, you may be asking how hospitals are doing to retain nurses and ensure an enduring workforce.

Here are five effective nurse retention strategies and ideas that hospitals can implement to maintain an ongoing staff in clinical settings.

Effective Nurse Retention Strategies

1. Establish a Transition Practice Program

The initial year for any newly hired healthcare professional can often be the most trying; they’re expected to nursing practice independently without much guidance from academia. To help ease their transition, hospitals usually implement transition licensed practical nurse programs or clinical nurse residency programs that offer 14-15 months of targeted basic nursing skills training for newly employed nurses.

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Transition-to-clinical practice nursing programs have proven their ability to increase the retention of nurses by offering more support options to assist them with transitioning into their roles. Such practical nursing programs from the best nursing colleges in Illinois (community colleges) with prerequisite courses also benefit residential care facilities and staff as they improve patient care quality by checking vital signs while decreasing medical errors and increasing overall satisfaction levels at nursing homes.

2. Create a Mentorship or Buddy System

New nurses often rely on more experienced colleagues for emotional and educational support after finishing orientation, yet forming these peer relationships in a new work environment may be challenging. Appointing new nurses or health care teams as mentors or buddies can foster a more collegiate atmosphere and make transitioning easier.

3. Provide Rewarding Career Opportunities

Nursing is an ever-evolving field, with recent graduates seeking ways to further their development. You can encourage growth at your facility by offering resources to help new nurses set and reach realistic goals – and take note of these strategies for developing them:

Create a medical ladder system to enable up-and-down mobility in bed. Grant credits or financial aid for nurses seeking higher nursing education. And provide free training workshops featuring cutting-edge research methods in long-term care facilities.

4. Recognize Early-Career Accomplishments

Transitioning to a new job often leaves people uncertain of themselves; impostor syndrome may make new nurses believe they’re not contributing their best efforts to provide high-quality healthcare services. Recognizing early nursing career achievements is vitally important and should not be underrated!

Leaders must recognize and appreciate the achievements of nurses or healthcare team in their early years to reduce feelings of inadequacy. You could organize an annual award for rookie nurses or hand out employee appreciation gifts and cards to recognize individual achievement.

5. Foster a Healthy Work-life Balance

Burnout is one of the primary factors contributing to nurse turnover throughout their career in nursing. To prevent burnout, nurse registrars must establish early on the concept of a balanced work-life schedule to ensure new nurses don’t become overwhelmed when transitioning into their positions. You can ease workload management using these strategies:

Maintain adequate staffing levels and assign patients accordingly. Create an online time period-management system that takes into account nurses’ preferences. Avoid calling nurses on their off days by expanding staffing options in healthcare settings. This quick article is enough to understand how to retain new nurses.

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Explore More Options to Assist Nurses

After developing strategies to retain new nurses, consider learning additional ways of supporting nurses at all levels. Take advantage of nursing courses in practical nurse school (vocational schools) to get clinical experience and gain more knowledge in the field of nursing. After all preparation, nursing students can apply for professional licensure and will get an LPN license.