STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING NURSE RETENTION IN NEW YORK CITY

New York City, like the rest of the U.S., faces a significant and growing shortage of registered nurses practicing in hospitals and other health care settings. One of the factors contributing to this shortage is the fact that many RNs leave nursing for any one of a number of reasons. Successful efforts to address the nursing shortage must include an emphasis on understanding reasons why nurses leave nursing and what can encourage more nurses to stay in practice.

This project, funded by the New York City Department of Mental Health through an allocation from the New York City Council, focuses developing strategies to increase nurse retention. The project includes analysis of available data on the NYC nursing workforce, including an analysis of NYC-area data from the 1996, 2000 and 2005 National Sample Surveys of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) conducted by the Health Resources Services Administration. The project will also detail efforts to improve retention that have been employed in NYC hospitals and other health care organizations, and will examine best practices and whether and how these can be replicated across different settings. The project will also include an in-depth analysis of two issues related to nursing retention that are amenable to policy initiatives, and a discussion of policy options and recommendations. The project will develop a report based on its findings and recommendations, which will also be presented in a public symposium following the conclusion of the project.

EXPANDING NURSING WORKFORCE DIVERSITY IN NEW YORK CITY

In conjunction with the project on nurse retention (discussed above), we are convening a group of experts to address issues in workforce diversity among RNs practicing in New York City. NYC includes a much larger percentage of ethnic minority RNs than the national nursing workforce as a whole. In part, this reflects large number of immigrant nurses, including a substantial number who have been educated abroad and are recruited to work in NYC hospitals. This group will examine current data and address issues related to recruiting and retaining ethnic minority nurses and examine the relationships between diversity and international recruitment/mobility and develop a report, including policy options and recommendations.

POLICY, POLITICS & NURSING PRACTICE

David Keepnews, PhD, JD, RN, FAAN, Director of the Office of Policy Development, serves as Editor-in-Chief of Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal focused on the relationships between health policy and nursing. Information on that journal is available at ppn/sagepub.com.