Nurses' retention and hospital characteristics in New South Wales, CHERE Discussion Paper No 52

NURSES’ RETENTION AND HOSPITAL CHARACTERISTICS IN NEW SOUTH WALES

PRELIMINARY

Abstract

Nursing shortages are commonly observed features of hospital systems in Australia, Europe and the
United States. To date there has been very little research on the effects of hospital characteristics on
the retention of the nursing staff. In this paper we match individual data on registered nurses (RNs)
working in the public sector in NSW in 1996 to the hospital in which they work. We analyze the
annual retention probability for these RNs using the nurses’ personal characteristics as well as the
characteristics of the hospitals. It is found that the type of hospital per se does not help explain the
retention probability of the nurses employed in the premise but the hospital characteristics do.

Hospital characteristics include measures of size, complexity, intensity, expenditures and staffing
levels. The results suggest that the effects of these variables are complex. For example, complexity of
the work as measured by admissions from emergency increase retention while high cost procedures
and large ANDRG weights reduce retention. Higher levels of expenditures (at constant staffing levels)
increase retention except for expenditures on visiting medical officers which reduce retention. The
effects on the expected retention probability are very large and significant. One implication of our
findings is that simply increasing staffing levels is unlikely to achieve much impact on nurses’
retention levels unless problem areas of the job are also addressed.

IV

<<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   >>

More intriguing information