Nurse Manager Succession Planning

Organizations can implement nurse manager succession planning to meet the ever-changing complex needs of health care by recruiting, retaining, and preparing future nurse managers. Appropriate selection and ample preparation of nurse managers improves the work environment, staff engagement, patient outcomes, retention and turnover rates, management competencies, and financial performances. Nurse manager succession planning is an effective business strategy used to sustain leadership capital, retain qualified nurse managers, decrease turnover, and prevent disruptions in the organization’s functions. Seventy percent of hospitals reported a lack of formal succession planning implementation at their organization.      

            The purpose of this presentation is to review academic literature to answer the following nursing administrative management question: Among hospital organizations (P), what is the evidence for nurse manager succession planning (I), to increase nurse retention rates (O)?  PubMed, CINAHL, and Ovid databases were searched utilizing key terms and a search criterion; three studies were included in the data synthesis. Succession planning can improve retention rates. 

The quasi-experiment conducted by Titzer et al. (2014), identified the benefits of utilizing succession planning as a positive retention tool.  Titzer et al. (2013) conducted a systematic review to synthesize evidence and concluded that implementing succession planning increases patient and employee satisfaction, and patient safety, thus improving nurse retention rates.  Carriere et al. (2009) identified eight strategies to initiate succession planning that assist employees to strive to meet leadership goals, which increases retention of established leaders.

The implementation of nurse manager succession planning can occur within any hospital organization that employs nurse managers, and want to improve and manage retention rates.  Overall the data from the literature provides information regarding the needs and benefits of succession planning, but it does not identify a clear and definitive framework or comprehensive model to implement nurse manager succession planning. The lack of evidence and cost benefit analysis, limited resource allocation and inclusivity to internal recruiting are barriers to implementing nurse manager succession planning. Future research studies should be conducted to verify the effectiveness of the methods and models of nurse manager succession planning in order to develop a comprehensive and effective succession planning program.