On April 9, researchers published a study in JAMA Network Open that surveyed 7,887 nurses working in long-term care communities in Illinois and New York who left the healthcare sector between 2018 and 2021 to determine the top drivers of impacting those exiting the sector. While planned retirement was the top reason at 59%, a strong second were poor working conditions such as chronically low staffing, burnout, and poor work-life balance.
Karen Lasater, PhD, RN, an assistant professor at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics and senior author, said, “Nurses are not principally leaving for personal reasons, like going back to school or because they lack resilience, they are working in chronically poorly staffed conditions which is an ongoing problem that predates the pandemic.” This cross-sectional study was a secondary analysis of survey data from RNs actively licensed in New York and Illinois from April 13 to June 22, 2021. The RN4CAST-NY/IL study surveyed 100% of RNs in the 2 states via emails derived from state board nursing licensure lists. The survey response rate was 14%, which is within the usual range of response rates for electronic surveys.
