Staff Nurse Retention: What Makes an Impact in 2023

Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system. They are the ones who spend the most time with patients, providing care, administering medications, and ensuring that patients are comfortable and safe. However, nurses also face a lot of challenges in their work environment, including long hours, high stress levels, and often inadequate resources. It is crucial for healthcare organizations to create a work environment that enables nurses to thrive.

Here are some ways healthcare organizations can improve nurses' work environment to impact retention in 2023:

Outsource your social recruitment strategy with VisiblHire. Learn more.

1. Prioritize Staffing: One of the biggest challenges nurses face is understaffing. Healthcare organizations must prioritize staffing and ensure that there are enough nurses on duty to provide adequate care. By providing appropriate staffing levels, nurses can focus on their work and avoid burnout. The cost of each vacancy far outweighs the justification to increase salaries, offer sign-on bonuses, or improve benefits to attract and retain quality nursing staff.

2. Provide Adequate Resources: Nurses need the right resources to provide quality care to their patients. This includes access to equipment, medications, and supplies. Healthcare organizations must ensure that these resources are available and well-maintained to prevent delays in care.

3. Offer Supportive Leadership: Good leadership is critical in any work environment, and healthcare is no exception. Nurse managers and leaders must be supportive and understanding of the unique challenges that nurses face. This can include advocating for their needs, providing resources, and offering emotional support. Post-pandemic, nurses are actively seeking opportunities for internal mobility, professional growth and development. This type of focus can be a key differentiator to attract and retain staff nurses in 2023.

4. Provide Continuing Education: Nurses need ongoing training and education to keep up with the latest advancements in healthcare. Healthcare organizations must provide opportunities for continuing education to enable nurses to improve their skills and stay up-to-date on the latest trends. While tuition reimbursement programs are attractive to support nurses pursuit of continuing education, progressive organizations will begin to pivot in 2023 and provide up-front funding of higher education, certifications, etc., to reduce the financial burden on staff nurses.

Connect with nurses in the U.S. Join The RN Network, LinkedIn's premiere nursing group.

5. Promote Work-Life Balance: Nurses often work long and irregular hours, which can lead to burnout and high turnover rates. Healthcare organizations can promote work-life balance by offering flexible schedules, promoting self-care, and providing mental health resources. Job sharing, self-scheduling, and leveraging technology to manage this process will become a key differentiator to attract and retail staff nurses in 2023.

6. Encourage Communication: Communication is essential in any work environment, but it is especially important in healthcare. Healthcare organizations must encourage open communication between nurses, physicians, and other staff members to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that patients receive the best care possible.

6. Emphasize Patient-Centered Care and Safety: Patient-centered care and safety is essential to improving patient outcomes, and nurses play a critical role in this. Healthcare organizations must emphasize patient-centered care and provide resources to enable nurses to focus on the patient's needs and preferences.

Healthcare organizations must prioritize nurses' work environment to enable them to thrive in 2023. This includes providing adequate staffing, resources, supportive leadership, continuing education, work-life balance, open communication, and patient-centered care. By creating a positive work environment, healthcare organizations can improve patient outcomes, reduce turnover rates, and ultimately enhance the overall quality of care.