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Leadership can have an effect on the RN recruitment and retention efforts of healthcare facilities. Good leadership can have positive effects on RN recruitment and retention. However, bad leadership can severely affect the amount of staff nurses available to provide care to individuals at the bedside. A behavioral health hospital in Georgia experienced adverse effects in relation to RN recruitment and retention based upon current leadership practices. After a series of interviews with randomly-selected staff nurses from the facility between October and November of 2015, it was discovered that problems related to nursing leadership had an adverse impact on recruitment and retention efforts. Issues identified from the staff nurse interviews included “poor leadership” which was described as “poor organization/chaos” (personal communication, October 2-27, 2015). In addition, the nurses felt that there was a “lack of good communication between nurse managers and nurses” (personal communication, October 2-27, 2015). The nurse interviews revealed both advantages and disadvantages of working at the hospital. As a result, the disadvantages were in excess of the advantages, and many nurses cited the disadvantages (i.e., low pay, insufficient staffing, mandatory holdover policy, disrespect from nurse managers, etc.) as reasons for possibly seeking other employment in the near future. Strategies to improve RN recruitment and retention were presented to hospital nursing leadership (i.e., nurse executives) based upon a literature review. The negative effects of nursing turnover (i.e., decreased quality of patient care and satisfaction, lower organizational productivity, increased costs, etc.) was presented to the hospital nurse administrators (Li & Jones, 2013). Suggested strategies based upon the literature included elimination of the mandatory holdover policy, the creation of a New Nurse Fellowship Program and Nurse Managers Academy, and the adaptation of a transformational leadership approach by nursing administration (American Nurses Association, 2015; Kooker & Kamikawa, 2010; Rivers et al., 2011).
Keywords: nursing leadership, nurse retention, nurse recruitment