[Intention to leave the hospital among nurses with ≤ 3 years of work experience: an exploratory study]

The retention of nursing workforce is one of the challenges of nursing managers. Since the turnover intention is associated to the real turnover, a deeper understanding of reasons why young nurses would leave the hospital could give some hints to help to retain them.

To explore the factors that affect the turnover intention in nurses with a work experience <3 years.

Nurses with <3 years of experience, working in 3 large Italian hospitals completed a questionnaire aimed at exploring the turnover intention, job satisfaction, perception of self-competence, organizational commitment, perception of organizational support and of the quality of delivered care, asking to express their agreement on a likert scale from 1 to 5.

The results showed that 34.4% of the nurses intended to leave the hospital within 1 year, 43.8% of them had already asked to be transferred a to another hospital. The majority of nurses who intended to leave were male, with a full time employment and living farther than 30 kilometers from the hospital. Moreover they were less satisfied with their current job, for the relationship with the colleagues, the Nurse Manager and the physicians, perceived themselves less competent, less committed to their unit and less supported by the organization compared with than nurses who intended to stay.

This study supports the importance of increasing job satisfaction and organizational commitment for nurses'retention.