Boomerang Nurses: Why They Leave and Why They Return

Abstract

Nursing turnover within hospitals is a nationwide problem, with over 20% of new nurses leaving their position in the first year of practice. Of these some return to work at the same institution they left within 2 years. The impact on patient outcomes and cost to the institution are similar to those of training new nurses. There is plethora of literature evaluating nurse turnover, however little is known about the turnover of boomerang nurses, specifically how the turnover is related to work environment. The purpose of this quantitative survey study was to discover if boomerang nurses perceptions of their work environment changed upon returning, what factors influenced their decisions to leave the organization, and what factors influenced their decisions to return at this organization. The sample consisted of 21 boomerang nurses who left the organization and returned within the study timeframe after two years or less of being away. The Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) (Lake, 2002) survey, along with demographic questions, was emailed to all potential participants and reminder emails were automatically sent out to those who had not completed the survey at two-week intervals for a total of three emails. Results were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 23 program. Participants were primarily female (n=17) and age 36-45 years (n=7) or greater than 56 years (n=7). There was no significant improvement for the PES-NWI overall composite score or the subscales for perceptions of the participants’ work environment before they left the institution and after they returned to the institution. When subscales were coded as favorable (>2.5) or unfavorable (<2.5), a chi-square test for independence indicated a significant association between perceived nursing manager ability, leadership, and support of nurses previously and their current perceptions (p=.02). Most participants selected working conditions (n=6) as their reason for leaving and sited nursing manager ability, leadership, and support of nurses the biggest reason for their working conditions (n=5) influencing their decision to leave. Most participants selected that they prefer working at this organization (n=7) as their reason for returning to work at this organization. Most participants did not return to the same unit in which they left (n=10). These results suggest that nurses left the organization because of the leadership of the unit they left, but that they returned to a different unit because they prefer to work for this organization. The organization could benefit from assessing leaderships’ ability to manage and support the nurses on their units, and to provide leadership with the education on how to be effective leaders.