• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Incredible Health

Empowering healthcare professionals to find and do their best work.

  • Nurses
    • Get Hired
    • Career
      • Resume Guide
      • Cover Letter Guide
      • Interview Questions
      • (NEW!) New Grads
      • Job Search Guides & Resources
      • Conferences
      • Licensure
    • Free Nursing CEUs
    • Salaries
      • Salary Estimator
      • Highest-Paying States
      • Highest-Paying Cities
      • Highest-Paying Jobs
    • Discounts
    • Resources
      • Nurses Blog
      • Nurse Advice Q&A
      • Nurse Specialty Quiz
      • Hiring Locations
  • Employers
    • Employers Blog
  • About
    • Reviews
    • Inside Incredible Health
    • Press
    • Careers
    • Contact
  • Browse Jobs
  • Sign In
  • Sign Up

12 leadership habits to improve nurse retention, according to research

WRITTEN BY Allie Rawson
DATE

May 24 2021


CATEGORIES Employers

Healthy work environments for nurses lead to better patient outcomes. In healthy work environments, nurses feel cared for and valued. Nurse leaders play an outsized role in creating a culture of caring, but may not understand what specific tactics help nurses feel cared for. This post breaks down twelve research-backed behaviors nurse leaders can practice to create a more caring environment. 

Caring environments matter because in hospitals where nurses are more satisfied with their jobs, patients’ risk of death is significantly lower. For example, patients in hospitals with poor work environments had a 16% lower chance of surviving in-hospital cardiac arrests than patients in hospitals with better work environments.

Unsurprisingly, nurses’ job satisfaction is correlated with nurse retention. Nursing turnover costs hospitals $3.6M to $6.5M per year, raising the cost of healthcare overall. 

Nurses’ stress levels are strongly correlated with the number of assigned patients. However, when nurses perceived a more caring environment, even with high patient loads, they reported less stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue. A culture of caring can buffer nurse stress, even when workloads are high.

Leaders have an outsize impact on whether a work environment is healthy. There is a significant correlation between the quality of nurse-manager relationships, nurse job satisfaction, and retention. 

However, there is a disconnect between managers’ perceptions of themselves and how their staff perceives them. Nurse managers may believe they are creating a positive culture when in fact their efforts are ineffective. Luckily, there are specific caring behaviors that nurse managers can do to improve frontline nurses’ perceptions of their leadership and caring.

Caring behaviors include:

  1. Debriefing after a patient death
  2. Making sure staff get meal breaks
  3. Flexible working arrangements
  4. Calling employees by name
  5. Making eye contact 
  6. Telling nurses they are valuable to the organization
  7. Listening
  8. Soliciting feedback
  9. Consistent communication
  10. Advocating for staff
  11. Being visible
  12. Creating inclusive celebrations

Nurse managers can implement some of these tactics immediately (like learning and using nurses’ names), while others require time (like consistent communication). Hospital leaders can incorporate these tactics into nurse manager education, to improve nurse and patient outcomes more broadly.

This post draws heavily from Staff Nurse Perceptions of Manager Caring Behaviors: A Scoping Study by Kelley Kostich, Sue Lasiter, and Renee Gorrell, published in The Journal of Nursing Administration in May 2020, as well as from The State of the Science of Nurse Work Environments in the United States: A Systematic Review by Holly Wei, Kerry Sewell, Gina Woody, and Mary Ann Rose published in The International Journal of Nursing Sciences in April 2018.

Trusted by over 300 top hospitals and health systems like Stanford Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, HCA, and Cedars Sinai, Incredible Health’s award-winning technology lets hospital recruiters hire permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less. Schedule time with a nurse hiring expert today.

Related articles

  • Top 17 Nursing Interview Questions, Answers and Tips
    Top 17 Nursing Interview Questions, Answers and Tips
  • How to Become a Cardiac Nurse
    How to Become a Cardiac Nurse
  • Permanent Nurse Workforce Planning in COVID-19 and Beyond
    Permanent Nurse Workforce Planning in COVID-19 and Beyond
Written by Allie Rawson

Allie is the Director of Enterprise Marketing at Incredible Health. She’s passionate about helping talented people find their next role and making sure they’re paid fairly once they get there.

Read more from Allie

Footer

NURSES

  • Resume Guide
  • Cover Letter
  • Interview Questions
  • Job Search Guides
  • Browse Jobs
  • Salaries
  • New Nurse Graduate Suite
  • Nurse Advice Q&A
  • Nurses Blog
  • Nurse Specialty Quiz
  • Discounts
  • Free Nursing CEUs
  • Wellness Resources

BROWSE JOBS

  • Atlanta
  • Denver
  • Las Vegas
  • Los Angeles
  • New York
  • Philadelphia
  • San Antonio
  • San Francisco
  • Seattle
  • Tampa
  • See all

EMPLOYERS

  • Why Incredible Health
  • How It Works
  • Employers Blog
  • Pricing
  • Free Consultation

COMPANY

  • About
  • Inside Incredible Health
  • Reviews
  • Press
  • Careers
  • Contact & support
[email protected]
​+1 888 410 1479
466 8th Street, San Francisco
California 94103

 

Download on the App Store
Get it on Google Play

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Terms
  • Privacy

Copyright © 2022 · Incredible Health