Improving Controllable Nursing Retention

In 2008, we found our controllable nursing retention had reached 61.19%. Of the turnovers, 30.33% were direct patient care registered nurses (RN). We identified that 29.79% of RN turnover occurred in the first year and 44.68% of RN turnover occurred in years 1 to 3. Thus, 74.44% or three quarters of our controllable RN turnover was occurring in the first 3 years.This article details our quality improvement project focusing on controllable nursing retention. Our goal was to improve controllable first year nursing retention and first-to-third year retention by 5% by July 2009. The tools and techniques we used to help drive our successful retention project will also be described.