Additional Measures the Nurse Leader and Manager Can Take in the Face of Nurse Turnover

Additional Measures the Nurse Leader and Manager Can Take in the Face of Nurse Turnover

There are additional measures that the nurse leader can institute to make sure that patient safety, professionalism, and standards of practice remain respected. She can make sure that skill mix in her team is correct. Regardless of the shortage, as the nurse and clinical manager she must ensure that the right skill mix among the registered nurses, enrolled nurses, and nurse assistants prevails (Moore, 2012). She must also make sure that she monitors her remaining staff more closely for signs of burnout such as increased irritability. This is because burnout itself will be a danger to patient safety as nurses suffering from burnout have been known to commit medication and nursing errors often.

As stated above, the leadership style that would best address the issue of nurse turnover is transformational leadership. This is a style that ensures motivation to the staff, a conducive and welcoming work environment, and an understanding ear (Cheng et al., 2016). Lack of succession planning has however made it difficult to replicate this kind of leadership, though it remains the best for this situation (Balogh-Robinson, 2012).

Conclusion

High nursing staff turnover is a menace to all healthcare organizations. It has got detrimental effects to the standard of care that is delivered by the remaining staff since they get overwhelmed with work. To effectively manage its impact, transformational nurse leadership is required. Benchmark – Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management.