Draft Plan of Action for your Capstone Project (Increasing Nurse Retention) to Include Goals, Timelines, and Action Steps
This Capstone Project is all about increasing Nurse retention by doing small projects to increase nurse satisfaction, thereby increasing retention at a hospital that has a major shortage. The small project that this will focus on is bringing the Daisy Award of Excellence to the Villages Regional Hospital. This facility offers nothing in the way of nurse ladder, no acknowledgement of good nursing, nothing… so bringing this award will help increase nurse satisfaction and improve nurse retention.
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Nurse Retention Plan
Nurses have a critical role to play in ensuring that the health needs of the diverse populations are met. They work in collaboration with other healthcare providers in determining the manner in which the diverse needs of the patients can be met (Marshall, Edmonson & England, 2017). Despite this fact, most institutions of healthcare face the challenge of high turnover rates among the nurses. The high rate of turnover could be attributed to factors such as lack of job satisfaction, recognition, and interest in their jobs (Yoder-Wise, 2019). It could also be due to institutional factors such as rigid leadership styles, poor communication, and lack of recognition of their contributions (Cherry & Jacob, 2018). The effects of high rate of turnover among the nurses include increased workload, provision of low quality care, and increased operational costs. Due to this, most institutions are embracing interventions that aim at increasing the retention of their workforce to promote continuous quality improvement in the provision of care (Britnell, 2019). Therefore, this research paper is an examination of the draft plan that would be used to increase retention of nurses in The Villages Regional Hospitals. It examines the goals, timelines, and action steps that would be used to achieve this objective.
Draft Plan of Action for your Capstone Project (Increasing Nurse Retention) to Include Goals, Timelines, and Action Steps
Goals
There are several goals for this project. The goals are divided into groups that include long, intermediate, and short-term goals. Long-term goals will refer to those that would be achieved within a period of five years. Intermediate goals will refer to those that would be achieved within a period of three years. Short-term goals will comprise of those that would be realized within a period of one year. One of the long-term goals for the project is to increase nurse retention rate in village regional hospitals by 75% in the next five years. The other goal is to reduce the operational costs associated with turnover among the nurses by 65% in the next five years. The other long-term goal is to adopt organizational structures that promote nurse retention in the village regional hospitals in the next five years.
One of the intermediate goals will be the adoption of an effective plan of nurse retention within the period of three years. The other intermediate goal will be the determination of the cost-benefit analysis of the sustainability of nurse retention initiatives by the end of three years. One of the short-term goals of the project is to ensure that the Villages Regional Hospital receives the Nationwide Daisy award of Nursing Excellence in the next one year. Achieving this goal will demonstrate excellence in service provision as well as nurse retention in the organization. The other short-term goal is the identification of facilitators and barriers to nurse retention in the selected hospitals within a period of one year. The other goal is the identification and implementation of the nurse retention strategies within one year. The last intervention is strengthening the creation of enabling environments for nurse retention in these hospitals within one year.
Action Steps
The action steps that would guide this project include the following
Conducting organizational assessment to determine the nurse retention rates in the selected hospitals
Assessing the understanding of the nurse leaders in the hospitals on nurse retention strategies and their importance
Conducting surveys among the nurses in these hospitals to identify their perceived retention strategies that should be adopted
Holding a stakeholder meeting to discuss the need for the retention among the nurses to be improved
Developing retention strategies collaboratively with the nurses
Determining the resource needs for the proposed nurse retention strategies
Providing the necessary facilitation such as training and rewarding performance to enhance retention
Monitoring the progress of the project, correcting weakness, and improving on the identified strengths
Evaluating the effectiveness of the adopted strategies in one, three, and five year period
Timelines
As shown earlier, this project will be implemented over five-year period. Therefore, the initial stage of the process will be the identification of the nurses and nurse leaders’ perceived strategies that should be embraced to promote nurse retention. This should take a period of one month. The second step is holding a stakeholder meeting to determine the prioritized interventions, which will take a month. The third step will be the determination of the resource needs for the selected strategies. This will also take a month since it requires stakeholder consultation. The fourth step will be the implementation and monitoring of the interventions, which will run for one year. The last intervention will be evaluation of the strategies at one, three, and five year period. The projected is expected to begin on March 2020.
Conclusion
Promoting nurse retention in an organization is one of the ways of promoting excellence. It reduces the costs incurred in hiring, training, and retaining new nurses. It also reduces the costs associated with low quality of care and high workload for the other nurses. Therefore, it is important that optimum retention of the nurses be promoted in the village regional hospitals.
References
Britnell, M. (2019). Human: Solving the global workforce crisis in healthcare. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2018). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. St. Louis, MI: Mosby.
Marshall, J., Edmonson, J. C., & England, V. (2017). Nurse manager’s guide to retention & recruitment. Middleton, MA: HCPro.
Yoder-Wise, P. S. (2019). Leading and Managing in Nursing. St. Louis, MI: Mosby.
