The use of exit interviews in health service facilities

Exit Interviews, also known as termination or separation interviews, are conducted in some hospitals and other health service agencies as a routine procedure when staff are ending their period of employment. The major purpose of these interviews is to elicit data regarding the employee's working experience in the organization and hence identify those factors that enhance retention of staff, for example, job satisfaction, study opportunity, challenging milieu, and those that are contributory factors to the decision to resign, such as, dissatisfaction due to poor standards of care becoming the norm and lack of autonomy in planning and implementing nursing care. As a recent study indicated, the hierarchical level of the Exit Interviewer could have a significant effect on the amount and accuracy of the data so obtained. While applicable to all departments of a facility, comments herein are largely concerned with nursing and are based on a thesis by the author.