Health Care Leaders' Strategies to Improve Nurse Retention

• Main Author: Brooks, Steve
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: ScholarWorks 2017
• Subjects: Business
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4425; https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5528&context=dissertations

Registered nurse (RN) turnover is a significant threat to organizational performance and profitability. Nurse turnover impacts business practices by disrupting staffing and patient care. The inability of health care leaders to retain RNs in their organizations results in problems such as increased personnel costs and productivity loss. Grounded by Burns's transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies health care leaders used to improve RN retention. Health care leaders from Brooklyn, New York who implemented RN retention strategies in their organization comprised the population for the study. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews with 4 health care leaders and the review of hospital human resource documents. Data were analyzed using methodological triangulation, thematic analysis, and open-coding to identify patterns and themes. Three main themes emerged from the data analysis: supportive leadership improved RN retention, fostering teamwork improved RN retention, and effective communication improved RN retention. The application of the findings from this study may contribute to social change because health care leaders may use these strategies to improve RN retention and positively influence the productivity of the hospital workforce. Increasing the productivity of the workforce may lead to RN engagement and commitment, which may result in improved organizational growth, increased profitability, and quality medical care for individuals of the surrounding communities.