NURSE TURNOVER DEFINITION PROFESSIONAL

Nurses are the largest group in the healthcare team and have the longest contact time with patients. Studies have reported that COVID-19 has impacted healthcare workers physically and psychologically, many of whom reported fears of contracting the disease or infecting a loved one. In addition, it imposed an unprecedented demand on healthcare systems and workers worldwide. The pandemic caused vast closures and travel bans in the global attempt to control it, which has had economic and psychological impacts on the public. Currently, the number of reported cases is 186 million, and the number of deaths exceeds 4 million. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China, and the World Health Organization (WHO) office was informed about the novel disease on 31 December 2019. Hence, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic can impact these predictors and therefore impact nurses’ turnover and turnover intention. Historically, the prementioned predictors were found to be impacted by major crises such as pandemics.

Among the identified predictors are job satisfaction, job commitment, stress, anxiety, and burnout. Thus, numerous studies have been conducted to identify nurses’ turnover intention predictors and provide useful information for the development of remedial programs to lower nurses’ turnover intention rates. Moreover, it has been linked to increased healthcare system costs due to its impact on both financial and time resources.

Turnover intention has been linked to several adverse outcomes such as medication error, falls, and pressure injuries. Nonetheless, nurses’ turnover intention has been widely defined as “an individual’s perceived probability of permanently leaving the employing organization in the near future”.

NURSE TURNOVER DEFINITION PROFESSIONAL

Although increasing attention has been paid to the difference between organizational and professional turnover intentions, the lack of consistency of the definition and measurement of organizational turnover, professional turnover, organizational turnover intention, and professional turnover intention is still evident in the nursing literature. Many terms have been used in the nursing literature that are synonymous with nurses’ turnover intention, such as intention to leave, intention to quit, intention to stay, risk of quitting, and job retention intention. In addition, nurses’ turnover intention has been defined in the literature as the most accurate predictor of actual nurse turnover. In the literature, studies that measured the actual organizational and professional nurse turnover are limited however, many studies have evaluated nurses’ turnover intention. Nurse turnover could be either organizational or professional, with the latter being the most consequential because of its contribution to the preexisting nurse shortage. It has been defended as voluntary and early termination of nurses’ employment. Nurse turnover has been defined as a global healthcare-system issue. The findings of this review should be considered by nurse managers and leaders in the development of policies and programs to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on nurse retention. Post-COVID-19-pandemic studies focused more on predicting nurses’ turnover intention through the pandemic’s negative impact on the nurses’ psychological wellbeing. The reviewed literature suggested that nurses’ turnover intention increased significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Forty-three studies on nurses’ turnover intention were appraised and synthesized. The aim of this review is to appraise and integrate the current pre- and post-coronavirus disease (COVID-19) literature on nurse turnover, published between 20. Thus, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nurses’ turnover and turnover intention warrants investigation. Considering the alarming issues of stress, burnout, and turnover among nurses even before the pandemic, the pandemic might have amplified such issues.

In addition, the number of critical cases, the uncertainty about the disease, and the incidence rate of death from the disease impose a psychological stress on nurses. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand and workload on nurses.

Nurse turnover definition