Lowest turnover specialty

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I want to ask everyone here what they consider the lowest turnover specialty to be.

Where staff stake their tent, and stick around for a good long while.

I equate low turnover to = high job satisfaction.

On the top of my head, I am thinking L&D, or NICU. Certainly not Med/Surg or ER.

Which is the dream unit/specialty that generally yields the highest satisfaction?

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

I think it's going to have a lot more to do with the facility politics, benefits, and culture than the actual specialty. One thing said about us OR nurses is that we either hate it and leave right away or love it and stay for a career. I would have believed that a few years ago, but then management changed and a lot of people walked out to the point that we are nearly short a quarter of our department's staff. So we went from extremely low turnover to just can't keep staff.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Do you mean sticking with a specialty for a long time? Because that HAS to be OR. When is the last time you heard a nurse say "I used to work OR"? Never is when. It's like once they go behind those doors, they never come out.

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Why do you both say OR is the winner here?

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

I also think it is more about the facility than the actual specialty. If people are happy with their unit and administration I think they tend to stay a long time even if it might not be their first choice of specialty.

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My hospital can't keep OR staff despite doing paid education courses to work there (five months for both new grads and experienced staff).

Opthamology and ENT seem to keep their staff as does our outpatients department.

The Fertility Clinic has a revolving door for staff

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Employee Health

Same Day/ Ambulatory Surg

OR

Radiology

L&D

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.

PACU

OR

L&D

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Yeah L&D definitely is one area that I have noticed long term employees at all the facilities where I have worked.

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Specializes in Adult and Pediatric Vascular Access, Paramedic.

IV nursing!

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Specializes in 15 years in ICU, 22 years in PACU.

I'll put in a plug for PACU.

When I started on my unit they couldn't even find their orientation manual it had been so long since they had a new nurse.

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Specializes in NICU, telemetry.

We have a pretty quick turnover in our NICU. A lot of people leave within 3 years or less. We do have a fair number of those who've been there 15-20+ years, but we're a huge unit(150 staff), and on night shift at least, most of the nurses have been there 5 years or less. Days really isn't all that different.

Nowhere near as fast as the telemetry unit I used to work on, but still! I expected people to stay around longer.

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