Improving nurse retention in the National Health Service in England: the impact of job satisfaction on intentions to quit

In recent years the British National Health Service (NHS) has experienced a n acute shortage of qualified nurses. This has placed issues of recruitment and retention in the profession high on the political agenda. In this pape r, we investigate the determinants of job satisfaction for nurses and estab lish the importance of job satisfaction in determining nurses' intentions t o quit the NHS. We find that nurses who report overall dissatisfaction with their jobs have a 65% higher probability of intending to quit than those r eporting to be satisfied. However, dissatisfaction with promotion and train ing opportunities are found to have a stronger impact than workload or pay. Recent policies, which focus heavily on improving the pay of all NHS nurse s, will have only limited success unless they are accompanied by improved p romotion and training opportunities. Better retention will, in turn, lead t o reduced workload. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.