Study: Nurse turnover not highest priority

While the Hospital healthcare executives may feel that turnover of nurses(and doctors) is not a big deal, it is the single most important factor contributing to failure of medical establishments, particularly small hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers. Due to the ever-changing technology, IT tools, disease management protocols, having untrained nurses to learn on the job can adversely affect clinical outcomes and the solvency of institutions. It is hard to do a controlled study of these kinds of issues. All active clinicians (particularly those in procedure oriented specialties) recognize high nurse turnover as a very serious problem. Not all registered nurses come equally equipped. Some are not trainable. Unfortunately the very best of nurses are used for mindless tasks like pushing paperwork, filling forms, pushing IV drugs and in our hospital even making cute posters for JCAHO visits! (all of which can be very well handled safely and cost-effectively by LPNs). It is these kinds of menial tasks that have led to high burn out rate among RNs. The nursing establishment too is responsible for this mess as they restrict job description for LPNs and choose to ignore that an experienced LPN may be just as competent to push IV medications as an RN. We really need well-qualified (graduate level or higher basic ed), well-trained nurses to operate the vast array of tools we use in our practices. Perhaps the only solution may be relaxing the admission rules for well trained specialty nurses from other countries.