Factors leading to local nursing turnover

Abstract

The nursing workforce is a critical component of any healthcare system. A shortage of this human resource negatively impacts patients, the economy, and even the nursing workforce itself. This valuable resource is in short supply globally, and in Malta there is a shortage of roughly 10% of the nursing workforce. Therefore, it is of great importance that measures are taken to improve the uptake and retention of nurses. This dissertation aims to elicit and understand the underlying reasons behind local nursing turnover, specifically nurses who voluntarily resign from the nursing profession, in order to provide recommendations for future research and recommendations for measures that can be planned for and undertaken by the management of the nursing profession in Malta. This study utilised the interpretivism paradigm with an inductive, qualitative, phenomenological approach. The target population were nurses employed in the public healthcare system of Malta, who voluntarily resigned from the profession during the period of 2012 to 2022. Seven respondent participants had taken part in semi-structured interviews which had been recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the transcriptions, the findings of which were then discussed alongside the data gathered through a literature review of the same topic. The results of the study had shown that the main factors resulting in the participants’ resignations stemmed from issues with organisational management and leadership. These ranged from inflexibility with working hours, excessive workload and unacknowledged responsibility, to those in leadership roles lacking the experience and aptitude that is required to appropriately manage the specific work environments. These factors had led to the participants reaching unbearable levels of stress and anxiety, feeling unheard, unsupported, undervalued, not respected, and with some reporting that they had features of burn out. This study was undertaken solely by the researcher as part of a Master degree in Management and Leadership in Health Sciences. Ethical approval was sought and granted by the Faculty Research Ethics Committee of the University of Malta. No conflict of interest was present as no funding was received for the research project.