Nursing

Retain nurses with an "educational hour"

Nurse Leader Weekly, April 14, 2003

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

If you're looking to add to your retention program, try making a special effort to give nurses the time and resources they need to grow as professionals. That's what one Vermont manager has done.

Judy Audette, RN, CRRN, a rehab nurse manager from Windsor, VT, leads 20 nurses on her unit at Mount Ascutney Hospital. To increase staff satisfaction and retention, she developed a program whereby nurses can have one solid hour of educational time twice a month.

Audette allots two days per month to bring in extra employees to help out on her unit. These employees are regular staff members who, because of scheduling, work only 32 hours a month on Audette's unit. By picking up this extra shift, these nurses increase their hours, says Audette, bringing their total time up to the usual 40 hours.

The added help that these nurses provide allows for the staff members working that day to take one hour away from their regular duties to watch videos, read journals, check the code cart, or attend in-services. The extra staff member takes educational time as well, says Audette.

Extra employees work an entire day, covering for each nurse who regularly works the shift as he or she takes the allotted educational hour. When Sue watches a training video from 12 to 1, the extra employee takes over her tasks; and when Abby reads the latest nursing journal from 1 to 2, the extra nurse covers her duties; and so on.

Such a program may work best for facilities with a less severe staffing crunch than others because the strategy requires additional nurses. The pay for these extra nurses comes from the education budget, says Audette.

She recommends the program to other facilities as a retention tool. "It's been very successful. The nurses feel that they are being treated professionally."

Adapted from: Surviving the nursing shortage: Strategies for Recruitment and Retention, a new book for nurse executives, www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=1449&=ENW.



Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

Most Popular

Related Articles