By Staff

The erosion of trust, institutional failure and rising violence from patients drive nurse turnover.

Another critical factor in nurse retention, is the erosion of trust between nurses and the institutions where they practice. Nurses enter the profession to provide competent, highly skilled and compassionate care. When conditions prevent them from delivering the care patients need, their professional integrity is compromised, resulting in moral distress, turnover and burnout.

Better pay, staffing and workloads are essential, but transactional fixes alone won’t retain nurses. Rebuilding trust requires shared responsibility among healthcare leaders, colleagues, patients and the public. Nurses must be respected, protected from harm and supported in fulfilling their professional commitments. Without trust, we risk losing both nurses and the quality and humanity of the care upon which patients depend.

Cynda Rushton, Ph.D., RN

Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

Baltimore, MD

I have been a registered nurse for 45 years. Nurses have always had a high turnover rate due to family demands and staffing concerns. But what is new is the threat of assault from patients and visitors. In the 1980s I never needed more than a supervisor to deal with the occasional unhappy patient or visitor. Today all staff wear panic buttons to summon standby teams ready to counter threats and violence. Violent people aren’t only in the emergency department or psychiatric unit, but on the medical floor, in intensive care, in clinics and in waiting rooms. Something has changed in our country. Anger and disrespect have now seeped into the hospital.

Barbara Edwards, RN

Arden, NC