Abstract
The world is currently facing a shortage of nursing staff. One of the factors affecting nurse shortages is that nurses are leaving the profession. Increased nurse turnover leads to adverse patient outcomes and high financial costs due to nursing staff replacement. Nursing staff retention is therefore important to maintain the quality of nursing care. Identifying factors that affect nurse retention is crucial for developing nurse retention strategies. The aim of this integrative review was to explore the reasons why nursing staff leave the nursing profession. The review was conducted using the Whittemore and Knafl (2005) methodology. Four databases were used to conduct a systematic literature search: PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Keywords used for the search were nursing shortage, nursing attrition, nurse attrition, nurse shortage, leaving nursing, nurse retention, nurse turnover, and left nursing.
Thirteen relevant articles were identified for the review and the Joanna Briggs Institute (2015) suite of tools was used to conduct a quality appraisal of the articles selected. Four themes were identified from the data analysis i.e. working environment, career and financial considerations, low staffing, workload and burnout, and nursing challenges. The findings highlighted how factors like lack of support from managers and colleagues, burnout arising from high workloads, lack of career progression, and the nature of nursing work affect nurses' job satisfaction and drive them out of the profession. Nurse managers and healthcare organisations should employ strategies to address these issues and strive to increase job satisfaction for nurses to improve retention.