With COVID-19’s increased demands on healthcare workers, nursing staff shortages have been widespread1,2,3. We evaluated data from more than 26 million 12-hour nursing shifts across 189 U.S. healthcare organizations to determine how much nursing staff turnover healthcare organizations are experiencing. One measure of turnover is the median length of time nurses have been at their current organization. We found that from March 2021 to March 2022, median tenure dropped 19.5% across all U.S. regions, as shown in figure 1.
While this decrease in median nurse tenure is seen across the U.S., the drop in tenure is most prominent in the West. Between March 2021 and March 2022, the median tenure fell in the West by 32.2%, compared to 17.7% in the Northeast, 16.4% in the Midwest, and 11.3% in the South. Another measure of nurse turnover is how many shifts are covered by new nurses, defined as a nurse who started at an organization in the last 30 days. The percentage of shifts covered by new nurses increased across all regions, with the largest increases in the South and West, as shown in figure 2.
Finally, we reviewed the distribution of shifts based on how many years the nurse had been at the organization. The greatest number of shifts were filled by nurses with less than one year of tenure, and this number rose by 55.5% from March 2021 to March 2022. This change was consistent across regions, but most pronounced in the West and South.
These findings show that nurses are changing organizations or leaving the profession more frequently, highlighting the need for organizations to invest in retention and onboarding programs for nurses. Bronson Healthcare is one example of an organization with a robust program for onboarding new nursing staff. They focus on developing strong mentor and preceptor programs. Learn more about their approach on EpicShare.
