Doctor of Nursing Practice Program
Kendall Kinler, DNP, MSN
-
Committee Chair Name & Credentials:
Terri Allison, DNP, ACNP-BC, FAANP
DNP Project Abstract
Nurse Retention: Factors of Intent to Stay
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to identify the highest influential factors of a nurse's intent to stay. In turn, that knowledge would assist the nursing administration on an intervention plan to combat the nurse turnover rate and help the nursing population at Regional One Health with nurse retention.
Methods
In this project, a survey was distributed to the nurses at ROH. The survey identified the highest influential factor of intent to stay. The five influential factors of intent to stay assessed were teamwork, current pay, flexible scheduling, respect and opportunity for progression. The survey participants included nurses in direct patient care and have been employed for a minimum of 6 months. The survey's questions were asked on an agreement scale and had an option for qualitative comments.
Results
There were 16 total responses to the survey. 14 of those responses were included in the results as 2 responses did not meet the inclusion criteria. The survey participants identified teamwork as the most influential factor of intent to stay. Teamwork had the highest average agreement score with 4.6 out of 5. The other factors ranked accordingly: current pay (4.1), respect for leadership (3.5), respect for peers (3.4), opportunity for progression (3.1), and flexible scheduling (2.9). There were 3 responses that included qualitative comments. All qualitative comments pertained to the topic of staff ratios.
Implications for Practice
Although current pay was ranked second, teamwork was still considered to be the highest influential factor. Based on the results from the survey, the suggested intervention implementation would be to focus on the teamwork factor to increase nurse retention rates. A few strategies to possibly implement would be to make unit huddles mandatory on each unit in Regional One Health, designate nurse partners, and examine and educate responsibilities of roles within nursing staff.
