Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Turnovers Nurse Turnover and Its Impacts on Quality of Care and Patient Safety

The healthcare job market has experienced a demand for healthcare professionals, especially in the nursing field. However, despite growing demand, the nursing field is faced with the challenge of increasing nurse turnover. According to Karlsson et al. (2019), the current healthcare problem of nurse turnover is predicted by factors present in the nursing work environment. Workplace challenges that lead to job dissatisfaction and burnout, such as insufficient staffing levels, technologies, leadership, and work-life balance, among others, are the leading causes of increased nurse turnover (Putra et al., 2020).

Increasing nurse turnover rates have an impact on the quality of care and patient safety. Nurse turnovers are associated with short staffing, longer work shifts, and more work for the available nurses, which leads to work burnout and fatigue (Wei et al., 2018). Work burnout and fatigue increase the risk of nurses committing medical errors that compromise patient safety. The lack of enough staffing also leads to a high patient-to-nurse ratio. This reduces the attention a single patient gets and the quality of care delivered.

Professional Standards of Practice in Solving Nurse Turnovers

Nurses in all care settings dedicate their careers and lives to caring for the sick and suffering. The demands of the current health care need have pushed nurses to pay less attention to themselves professionally in their private lives and needs. The mounting career pressure has resulted in high turnover rates, increased workloads for the remaining nurses, and a reduced supply of new nurses to the healthcare market. The focus today is to employ professional standards of practice that help retain the currently experienced nurses and attract others to join the nursing profession. As concluded by Putra et al. (2020), the level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment have an influence on the intentions of nurses to leave or remain in their current work. It is important for nurse leaders and healthcare managers to adopt strategies that effectively improve nurses’ job satisfaction in order to achieve commitment to healthcare organizations and retain the experienced nursing workforce.

Incentives for nurses have been identified as one of the most effective strategies to reduce nurse turnover rates and turnover intentions and retain nurses, especially for early-career nurses with higher expectations in the nursing field (Brook et al., 2019). Incentives also make the nursing profession an attractive field in the job markets, leading to a sufficient supply of new nursing professionals. Incentives to retain and attract nurses may include competitive salaries, rewards and bonuses for performance, career benefits, good over-time compensation, and good payments for time off work. Incentives can motivate and improve the nurses’ morale to provide quality care services and forego their intentions to leave. Professionalism in healthcare settings facilitates interdisciplinary teamwork and a conducive work environment that meets the needs of nurses. Such a collaborative work environment determines the ability of nurses to provide quality care, assure patient safety, and their intention to stay (Karlsson et al., 2019). Therefore, improving the workplace conditions for nurses in terms of wages, work benefits, and other bonuses promotes their intentions to stay and improves the quality of care for patients.