Nursing care delivery models and organizational structure Essay

Nursing care delivery models and organizational structure - Essay Example However, this paper tends to research how factors like organizational structure and care delivery models can influence nurse turnover rates. Introduction Health care sector across the world has been experiencing an unusual increase in nursing turnover for the past few decades. According to the NSI (2013) report, the hospital turnover rate increased to 14.7% and registered nurses is 13.1%. Nursing Solutions, Inc projects hospital turnover to be over 15.5% and RNturnover14% by2014. However, it is important to assess to what extent nursing care models and organizational structure can cause nurse turnover in modern hospital settings. This detailed analysis based on the available literature will suggest what advice Jamie Johns (in the given case context) as a Quality Improvement Leader can give to her Chief Nurse Officer on appropriate care delivery models. Impacts of Nurse Turnover Nurse Turnover is a major risk factor that affects the hospital’s functioning and effort for ensurin g quality patient care. Nursing turnover causes huge amount of financial loss to the hospital. Losing a single nurse can bring about the loss of twice the nurses’ annual salary. Therefore, loss of nurses adversely affects patient care thereby causing loss of patients, increased staffing cost, absenteeism, and accident rates. Poor communication with the management regarding their needs, low remuneration, and lack of career opportunities and career development in the hospital they work can also increase nurse turnover. Solutions for nurse turnover have been researched on a wider basis. According to Hunt (2009), the most important suggestion is to make the job attractive; and this process involves increasing job incentives, flexible scheduling and job sharing, adding career development activities. A major after effect of high turnover rate is that the existing staff is always forced to adjust with the newcomers. A study by Baernholdt and Mark (2009) showed that both rural and ur ban hospitals can improve nurse job satisfaction and turnover rates by changing unit characteristics, creating better support services and a work environment that supports autonomous nursing practice. According to the very findings, rural hospitals can also improve the work environment by providing nurses with more educational opportunities and thus career development. Scarcity of qualified nurses makes turnover so prevalent in the health care industry. The increase in job opportunities makes the existing nurses confident enough to leave their present organization and find a new one. Organizational Structure and Nurse Turnover Only by implementing key strategies, hospitals can put a curb on the turnover rate of nurses. Nursing is the largest occupation within the health care industry with 2.4 million people working. In recent reports by the International council of Nursing (Trust, 2006), one of the main reason for shortage of nurses relates to work environment. Studies have proven t hat a positive organisational climate plays a key role in job satisfaction and in lowering turnover rates. But the strength of organisational climate and job satisfaction is more compared to organisational climate and turnover rate. As Stone, Hughes, and Dailey (2008) point out, low job satisfaction leads to burnout, frequent leaves, higher rate of turnover, or loss of nursing profession. The work environment, especially the organizational structure has much to do with nursing turnover rate. A pleasant relationship with the hospital