Why are nurses leaving?

The Nuffield Trust informs us what nurses, nurse managers, directors of nursing and chief nursing officers have known for some time: nurses are leaving the profession in droves (Palmer and Rolewicz, 2022). The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), however, does not seem to have received the memo that in June 2022 there were over 46 800 nursing vacancies. It does not seem to be up to speed with the workforce crisis impacting on individual nurses, their families and patients. The perennial question surfaces again: where is the workforce strategy? It would appear, despite the numerous warnings from august organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), The King's Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that the workforce crisis has been pushed aside with a ‘make do and mend’ attitude.

In the past year more than 40 000 nurses have left our NHS: one in nine of the workforce (Palmer and Rolewicz, 2022; NHS Digital, 2022). Why are they leaving? There is an urgent need to understand and take action regarding the reasons why nurses have left and plan to leave, and also why they stay. Many of those leaving were highly skilled and knowledgeable nurses who had many more years of work left to offer. The number of leavers is almost offsetting new registrations.