Recruitment, recruitment, recruitment. It’s easy to continually raise the impact during and post COVID-19, however healthcare workforce shortages were predicted prior to the pandemic. Understanding why nurses are leaving the profession is therefore vitally important(Rention, retention, retention).

On a side note, don’t fall for the ‘number of registered nurses‘ reports, really look for the ‘number of registered nurses in employment‘. There is a large difference, and a need to look into why those registered aren’t in the nursing workforce any longer.

Journal Club Article

Muir, K. J., Porat-Dahlerbruch, J., Nikpour, J., Leep-Lazar, K., & Lasater, K. B. (2024). Top factors in nurses ending health care employment between 2018 and 2021. JAMA network open, 7(4), e244121-e244121.

This was not just a survey of nurses at the end of their working careers.

“Age distributions of nurses not employed in health care were similar to nurses currently employed in health care.”

Contributing Factors for Ending Employment

• Planned retirement
• Burnout or emotional exhaustion
• Insufficient staffing
• Lack of professional growth and advancement
• Wages
• Work flexibility and family obligations
• COVID-19

Away from the building individual reslience rhetoric, work environments are highlighted as the major contributing factor to address for the recruitment and retention of nurses. Flexible work opportunities and career development needs to be addressed, especially for senior and experienced nurses to remain in the clinical setting not just move into higher education or other non-clinical roles. And there is the ongoing need to set minimum workforce policies.