Survey to Compare Experienced Versus New Nurses’ Employment and Turnover in Japanese Hospitals

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of the survey was to identify the characteristic of employment and turnover of experienced nurses at Japanese Hospitals.

Method: Stratified sampling by hospital size identified 1,200 Japanese hospitals invited to participate in the survey. Nurse executives from each hospital provided the number of experienced nurses who were hired and left within 2013. The same data about newly graduated nurses were also collected for comparison.

Results: Returned were 246 valid responses. Experienced nurses tended to be hired by smaller, long-term care and psychiatric hospitals; by contrast newly graduated nurses were hired by larger and advanced treatment hospitals. While 75.7% of experienced nurses were hired full-time compared to 99.2% new graduates, 24.3% of experienced nurses were hired part-time compared to 0.8% of new graduates. The turnover rate of experienced nurses was 17.9%, and was higher than 7.9% for new graduates. Smaller hospitals with under 100 beds had difficulty in retaining experienced nurses.

Conclusion: The retention of experienced nurses was much lower compared to new graduates. It is proposed that each hospital develop tactics tailored to support experienced nurses continuing with their employment.