Nurses' Descriptions of Workplace Efforts to Improve Professional Well-being: An Analysis

To identify promising workplace strategies with the potential to improve nurse professional well-being.

A mental health crisis exists among nurses. This crisis contributes to high rates of intent to leave, but little is known about workplace-based approaches that can improve nurse professional well-being.

Researchers inductively and deductively analyzed 1317 nurses' free-text responses to a question about their workplaces' effort to improve their professional well-being. Researchers compared responses from nurses who plan to leave their position to responses from nurses who did not.

The most common response from both groups was that their workplace had made no effort. Nurses who intended to leave their jobs (40.8%) reported no effort was being implemented more often than nurses who did not (24.9%). The 2nd most common intervention was increased compensation such as incentive pay.

A lack of effort from workplaces may contribute to nurses' intent to leave and lower levels of professional well-being. Approaches that improve professional well-being include increased compensation and enhanced physical facilities.