Turnover of registered nurses in Israel: characteristics and predictors.

Background: In an era of global and local nursing shortages, nursing turnover has negative consequences in terms of diminished quality of care, increased costs and economic losses and decreased job satisfaction.

Objective: To examine the turnover rate of registered nurses in Israel by assessing the varying degree of turnover between economic sectors, between hospital and community facilities, and/or between types of hospitals; and by examining potential predicting factors of turnover among registered nurses.

Methods: A national phone survey was undertaken in Israel consisting of a random sampling of registered nurses of working age (up to age 60). The subjects comprised 10% of a national database of 32,000 registered nurses.

Results: The turnover rate among working nurses in Israel currently stands at 23%. In addition, 13% of employed nurses have taken a temporary leave of absence for a period greater than 6 months in the past 10 years, most up to 1 year. While job satisfaction rates were relatively high (72%), Professional satisfaction rates were 60% with no significant difference between hospital and community nurses. The turnover rate of registered nurses from a hospital setting to the community was significantly higher (p<.01) than that of community registered nurses to hospitals. Predicting factors of turnover were found to be: young age, part-time work, lack of advanced professional education, academic education and low satisfaction with the nursing profession.

Conclusions: The shift of nursing workforce is mainly from hospitals to community health settings. There is a need to monitor and understand the characteristics of job and professional satisfaction among hospital nurses in order to implement crucial organizational interventions and retain hospital nursing staffs. Since young nurses, nurses working part time and nurses with no advanced professional and academic education, tend to move more than others, efforts should be targeted at these specific groups.