Reasons for early retirement of new nursing staff

– An examination of their psychological processes—

Abstract

Why do a definite number of starting young nurses retire soon after finding new posts? This paper tries to find out the reasons by focusing on psychological processes by which they leave in less than a year after they are employed. Analysis of documents concerned reveals: they find their working environments different from what they have expected them to be; skills they have acquired at nursing schools/colleges prove insufficient for their expected jobs; they find it difficult to get along well with senior members; their mind and body do not fit in well; they lose interest in work of nursing itself. These reasons account for the difficulty of securing sufficient numbers of nurses, while they are common to other young people of the same generation working in other fields.