In July, Skills for Care (2024) launched A Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care in England. I was pleased to be able to support this by joining colleagues at an event hosted by the University of Salford. This focused on celebrating being a nurse in social care. The event commenced with the Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care in England, Deborah Sturdy, outlining her vision for the sector, and included conversations with inspirational nurses and students within adult social care.
Retention issues in nursing
The health and care nursing workforce is under significant pressure. The recently published Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2024) registration data report cites that, of the leavers who completed the NMC leavers’ survey, 49% stated they left earlier than expected. In the UK, burnout was the third most common reason given for leaving our profession and, worryingly, in line with the findings from last year's survey, around half of respondents are leaving earlier than planned (typically 5 years sooner than expected). Despite a slight improvement this year, most leavers said they would not recommend nursing or midwifery as a career. It was therefore important for us to take some time to use the opportunity to consider what brings joy to being a nurse in these complex times.
Professional enjoyment
Aligned to the focus of the day of celebrating social care nursing, was a presentation by Sam Donohue (2022), outlining her doctoral research, which explored professional enjoyment of nursing. Sam undertook a qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with 25 registered nurses from across sectors and settings and from all four nursing fields in England, who held various roles and tenure in the profession, to explore why nurses enjoyed nursing. The purposive sample of nurses were recruited via Twitter/X. The study enabled six themes to be developed from the data, using reflexive thematic data analysis (Donohue, 2022).
Sam presented the findings of the research, detailing enjoyment of the profession (including professional identity and career and growth opportunities), the factors that enhanced and diminished enjoyment in nursing (culture, leadership, the impact of others and being able to make a difference) and the consequences of enjoyment on teams and the people nurses support. The presentation resonated with the nurses in the audience, with Sam encouraging them to reflect on why they enjoy being a nurse and to talk openly about this with their teams and colleagues.
Supporting retention
The recruitment and retention of the registered nursing workforce is both a domestic and global challenge. There is limited research studying why nurses remain in post and what they enjoy about being a nurse, yet there has been a growth in international studies exploring why nurses leave the profession (Bahlman-van Ooijen et al, 2023). The aim of Sam's research, therefore, was to explore nurses’ experience of professional enjoyment and to understand the factors that enhance or diminish professional enjoyment of nursing to proactively support retention.
The study found that the experience of professional enjoyment of nursing was strongly associated with ‘being a nurse’, ‘making a difference’, from feeling valued and the value of the professional voice of nursing being heard. Professional enjoyment can be enhanced or diminished by others: by workplace culture, leadership, civility and recognition of contribution.
‘There is limited research studying why nurses remain in post and what they enjoy about being a nurse, yet there has been a growth in international studies exploring why nurses leave the profession ’
The study identified the positive and negative impacts the COVID-19 pandemic had on nurses’ professional enjoyment and discovered consequences of professional enjoyment on teams, nurse retention and patien experience. These findings were presented as four statements of knowledge on professional enjoyment of nursing.
Recommendations
The study offers conceptual clarity for the phenomenon of professional enjoyment and th concomitant concepts of joy, happiness, passion, job satisfaction and work engagement. The study includes recommendations for health and care organisations, executive nurse leaders and future research.
I would encourage readers to follow Sam on social media as she formally publishes her research to enable us to reflect on her findings and how this will impact retention.