Retention of nurses

Katnip, RN · Nov 20, 2004

Retention bonuses instead of huge sign-on bonuses.

Approriate staffing ratios.

Flexible scheduling.

Regular raises for existing staff, rather than bringing in new nurses at higher salaries than those who have been there for 20 years.

Educational opportunities. Increased salaries for higher education and certifications.

RN4NICU, LPN, LVN · Nov 20, 2004

Excellent suggestions cyberkat.

Anyone think we'll ever see it happen? It would be nice (MIGHT even convince me to stay in nursing), but I'm not going to hold my breath.

sharann, BSN, RN · Nov 20, 2004

It isn't a secret on how to retain nurses, really! It has always had to do with nurses feeling like unappreciated servants. It's the same everywhere(where retention is an issue). PAy the registry RN's almost double what you pay your own. Say you are "looking" for help but never find any. Keep adding on to nurses job description without letting them know. When nurses are treated well, believe me they will stay.(Of course that doesn't explain why we stay where we are treated badly....)

fergus51 · Nov 20, 2004

Ask the people who left WHY they left. That'll tell you what you need to do to retain staff.

RN4NICU, LPN, LVN · Nov 20, 2004

It isn't a secret on how to retain nurses, really! It has always had to do with nurses feeling like unappreciated servants. It's the same everywhere(where retention is an issue). PAy the registry RN's almost double what you pay your own. Say you are "looking" for help but never find any. Keep adding on to nurses job description without letting them know. When nurses are treated well, believe me they will stay.(Of course that doesn't explain why we stay where we are treated badly....)

Wherever this is, I will gladly go work registry there. Beats the h*ll out of only a few more dollars per hour for NO BENEFITS and NO GUARANTEED HOURS. On top of that, if you work at a facility that requires registry to cover holidays - there is no incentive whatsoever. Besides, where I work registry, I am an employee of the hospital, which makes me "one of their own" too.

Everyone likes to pick on the registry nurses until they want to take a day off, go on vacation, avoid mandatory overtime, etc. :rolleyes:

How about just treating ALL nurses a little better rather than making it these nurses vs. those nurses?

Tweety, BSN, RN · Nov 20, 2004

What Cyberkat said about sums it up for me. :)

lifeisbeautiful · Nov 20, 2004

I have to agree with Cybercat, too. I have mentioned the need for retention bonuses in several other threads on this board. The majority of Nurses that hop from hospital to hospital do so for the sign on bonuses. Plus, each hospital a Nurse moves to will offer a little bit more money an hour than the last job as a way to make their hospital a more appealing facility. We all know that hospitals have done their math and one must conclude that it must be cheaper for them to hire Registry and Travelers then provide bonuses to loyal staff members. You better believe that hospitals count on loyal staff members in the equation. Most staff make less $ an hour then Travelers and Registry and do not get any bonuses. Hospitals save a ton of money this way. So hypothetically, what if all Nurses hopped from facility to facility? You would see retention bonuses faster than you can blink an eye.

Trauma-tizedRN · Nov 20, 2004

If hospitals employed nurse retention measures there would be much less need for registry nurses. But they don't seem to care, which is so stupid. They pay double for the registry nurse (which by the way, is making agencies richer, not registry nurses...a few bucks an hour more is correct) instead of increasing nurse satisfaction. Duh, buy a vowel here.

Let's not bash registry nurses...

11:11 · Nov 20, 2004

Plus, each hospital a Nurse moves to will offer a little bit more money an hour than the last job as a way to make their hospital a more appealing facility

This is the only way to get a substantial increase in pay. Most hospitals use a calculator based upon years of experience. While this should be fair the increase isnt very substantial usually less than a dollar per year unless you are highly skilled with ICU equipment (ie ECMO, IABP, CRRT, LVAD-BiVAD etc)

Mean while MD's get free parking, meals, large bonuses etc. I dont hold that against them, I now know I dont have what it takes to survive and accell at 12-14 years of school, 80-120 hour work weeks, and 20-30 years worth of sleep deprivation.

Having said that, I believe there will be a lot of rather large and not very useful buildings standing empty in a few years.

650,000 RN's to fill 1.8 million positions by year 2010.

Did you know that there are 1.9 million nurses in the USA currently working, and that half of them are 50 years of age or older and will retire within the next 5 years?

Did you know if the current number of nursing schools could be doubled the need could not be met?

No offense, but until I can make twice what I do, get free meals and parking, free CEU and education benifits I'll keep hopping-

11

BTW

Something else on the horizon is hospitals wanting nurses to form groups. These groups would be contracted to provide services to hospitals etc and would meet their own needs ie healthcare etc.

This is reminiscent of the deregulation of skilled labor employees in rough and finsh trades during the early 1980's and resulting independent contractors.

Nursing groups would have to provide their own group buys for insurance, retirement, disability etc not to mention compete with each other for contracts. It has not been determined is this is feasible to my knowledge.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Nov 21, 2004

what must be done to help with the problem of retaining experienced nurses?:uhoh21: in the department that i work in we are always recruiting because we can not retain. i would love your suggestions.

i'm not sure that hospitals want to retain experienced nurses. the more experienced you are, the higher on the pay scale. it seems to be more popular to activly drive the more experienced nurses away while recruiting like crazy! how else do you explain my former manager who announced at a staff meeting that nurses who would spend a decade in the icu were "mediocre" nurses?

sharann, BSN, RN · Nov 21, 2004

I am not picking on registry nurses, but at the fact that hospitals need them at all. If hospitals treated their staff well(this includes the techs, secretaries,RT's etc) then there wouldn't be this big "them against us" thing. I don't have a problem with the NURSES themselves(Except the bad ones, which we have on staff as well). I hope this point gets across. I might want to work registry if conditions don't improve in my hospital!