Retaining skilled nurses can be a challenge to manage. What steps have you taken in the past to improve retention? How effective were the changes?

"I'm a firm believer in providing work-life balance for my team. My first step in improving retention is to communicate with my team to see where there are barriers and how we can overcome them. Some of the retention methods I implemented in my last role included flexible shifts, shift differential pay for nurses working overnight, a generous PTO policy, team building activities, and more. As a result, we saw a 20 percent increase in nurse retention."

I have found that a large part of staff leaving has to do with dissatisfaction in their position and not feeling appreciated. I have always believed that positive reinforcement goes a long way and I try to compliment nurses on the work they are doing regularly. When I notice a staff member is becoming burned out or seems unhappy in their job, I will approach them to discuss. Maybe they are picking up too much overtime? Or maybe there is a process or something on the unit I can improve to make their jobs just a little bit easier. When I was scheduling I always tried to figure out a way to approve PTO because everyone needs that time off. I have found that my efforts were very effective on staff retention, so much so I had many staff members requesting to come work on my unit.