Younger, less experienced nurses driving the workforce decline, analysis found

Almost 800,000 nurses intend to leave the workforce by 2027 because of stress, burnout, or retirement, according to a new analysis. Their impending departures come after about 100,000 registered nurses quit during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Registered nurses with fewer than 10 years of experience accounted for ~41% of those who left the profession during the pandemic, according to the 2022 National Nursing Workforce Survey by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), a nonprofit focused on nursing regulations.

Approximately 15% of nurses with fewer than 10 years of experience are expected to leave the workforce in the next five years, leading to a net decline of 188,962 nurses.

“The data is clear: the future of nursing and of the US health care ecosystem is at an urgent crossroads,” Maryann Alexander, NCSBN’s chief officer of nursing regulation, said in a statement. “The pandemic has stressed nurses to leave the workforce and has expedited an intent to leave in the near future, which will become a greater crisis and threaten patient populations if solutions are not enacted immediately.”

To combat the ongoing nursing shortage, some health systems have bolstered their international recruitment efforts or partnered with nursing schools to improve the pipeline.

Still, 62% of nurses surveyed reported that their workloads have increased during the pandemic. As a result, 50.8% of nurses reported feeling emotionally drained, “used up (56.4%), fatigued (49.7%), burned out (45.1%), or at the end of their rope (29.4%)” either a few times a week or every day, according to the analysis.

Nurses with fewer than 10 years’ experience with increased workloads were 2.5x–3x more likely to report feeling emotionally drained compared to nurses with similar amounts of experience but a normal workload, the analysis found. When compared to more experienced nurses with similarly high workloads, early-career nurses were still 10%–23% more likely to report these feelings.

For millennial and Gen Z nurses, mental health support, flexible hours, and continuing education and training could keep them in the profession, Becker’s Hospital Review reported.