Why do you think nurses leave the profession?

Nurses Professionalism

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  1. Reasons nurses leave the profession

    • 567
      Short-staffing
    • 314
      Too many tasks
    • 46
      Lack of upward mobility
    • 311
      Poor management
    • 212
      Underpayment
    • 144
      Other- please explain below

85 members have participated

I've been a nurse for awhile and have always contemplated what makes nurses leave the profession (or bedside for that manner). As a matter of fact, I have thought about it from time to time in the 13 years I've been a nurse. From my experience I have found that aspects such as short-staffing, too many tasks, lack of upward mobility, poor management and underpayment contribute to a nurses' unhappiness in their career.

I just wanted to ask the general nursing population regardless of how long you've been a nurse what your thoughts were. Do you think leaving the profession comes from one of the aspects listed above? Or is it something else entirely?

To be clear this is not a school assignment...;)

Specializes in Cardiac/Telemetry.

My top reasons for wanting to leave are: 3, 4, 9, 11, 12. It's exhausting with 4 cardiac Tele patients, 12 hours of running short staffed on CNA's so I have to do total care, add isolation for c-diff with multiple incontinent episode per shift, throw in dementia/confused and patient/family abuse. Nurses have no power, it's all about the Press Ganey scores. I honestly don't know how nurses in other states without ratios manage. God bless you. When I don't get to eat until 8 hours into my shift at 1500 I get cranky and I'm just counting down the few remaining years until retirement.

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

For me, it has been working with people who are rude, passive aggressive, gossipy, and unfair. I have a good team now but at times, women can be hormonal and moody. This is especially true working at night.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

Standing ovation to this response!

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Brekka, I won't quote your whole post above in the interest of saving space. Just know I hear you! Sounds about like my days, you sure don't see management ever buttering that toast, do you?

Indeed. But you will get a 20 minute lecture on how the same managers are either "practicing nurses" or "I have my masters in managing you"......but the toast remains unbuttered until the staff nurses do it...Sigh.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
For me, it has been working with people who are rude, passive aggressive, gossipy, and unfair. I have a good team now but at times, women can be hormonal and moody. This is especially true working at night.

Misogynist much? Men can be "hormonal" and moody as well.

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Specializes in peds, allergy-asthma, ob/gyn office.

I left hospital nursing (Pedi-Adolescent Pulmonary) in 1994 for many of these reasons. The top reason had to be under staffing. My floor was very heavy on multiple IV abx (CF pts), milk drips, TPN, new diabetics, and total care adult-sized CP/MR in for pneumonia. Management loved to not give our evening shift a CNA, a unit clerk, or both. Four patients was busy but OK. Five was more the usual number... One evening the floor got 5 admits, all at once. I had two toddlers, a brother and sister, admitted for Rotovirus. Came to the floor with fevers. It took forever to get their meds and Tylenol from the pharmacy. I even went down the pharmacy two floors away and begged. The whole place was a zoo that night and the parents were pretty hacked about the Tylenol.

The nurses getting blamed for others' mistakes rings a bell too. One week I'd had an infant for several days in a row. He was getting po antibiotic... Keflex.... a pink liquid. One night pharmacy sends up an orange liquid. I contacted the pharmacy and they could not exactly identify what they had sent up to the floor. Another evening.... same pt... I had been giving a stool softener. For a 7 lb baby it came in a tiny syringe. One night I got a larger amount, looked more like what an older child would take. It turns out the resident had written the order wrong, and I guess it got past the pharmacy. If I had given both of those meds My behind would have been in a sling!

And where I am now, a ridiculously understaffed clinic.... it stinks and I want out.

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what my former co-workers in the ICU say to me when I ask how they are doing. "same ____, different day, for the last 20 years. Most has to do with staffing and acuity of the patients. Thanks God I have retired after working as a ICU nurse for over 40 years. The nursing staffing has not changed BUT the numbers of middle managers in the hospital environment and the numbers of higherups has increased with new positions being created for them constantly. Something is wrong with this picture.

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

lee1,

Congratulations on all those years and making it through and OUT! :yes:

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I burnt out twice, both times from backstabbing from other nurses. Also, I got tired of all the hoops we have to go through that really aren't related to patient care. I only work part time now, distancing myself from other nurses, hoping not to get stabbed in the back again.

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Specializes in ER.

There are many that were listed before. I think part of it is also we are seeing sicker and sicker patients with no reduction in the nurse patient ratio and instead it increases sometimes. In my ER we are at 1:5. Med-surg nurses always say that the med-surg patients are sicker than what they ever were before but they are still at a high ratio.

Oh and the lack of breaks.

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Specializes in LTC Family Practice.

After 20 years I had major burn-out. Also as an LPN trained in bedside nursing we were being tossed from the hospitals and I had no desire to become an RN. I did find another area that I liked and that was rural Family Practice clinics (long before urgent cares) we did and saw it all from cradle to grave! I loved it but the pay was pathetic and I could hardly make it from pay check to pay check. Choices continue to dwindle and nursing was all I had ever done so I left and worked as an admin in IT departments and enjoyed it that went away and learned to run titles as a real estate title examiner history of the land but as we all know that died in '08. So now I work part time PRN as a patient sitter with 1013's my long dormant skills came flying back to the surface and I'm good at it -very good, I often am requested for difficult patients by unit managers....LOL crap pay but it helps supplement my SS. Would I become a nurse again - NO? I see what goes on today and I would not care to do it again. It's the patient that suffers the most and bedside care has left the building never to return.

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I couldn't have said it better!!

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