Hospitals and Health Networks had an article in their April issue titled Nurturing Your Nurse Managers and they presented five retention factors for nurse managers from a study published in Nursing Economics in 2003. Well, I don't want to beat the drum too much, however, number 4 was Work/Life Balance and it included flexible scheduling and relief from constant on-call duty.
This article reminded me of my days teaching a a local university in the Health Systems Management Department. Most of the students in my classes were nurses and many had left their hospital job for jobs with payors in order to have a schedule, which would allow them to take evening classes and get advanced degrees in healthcare.
In our class discussions these nurses often talked about the impact of their rotating and/or rigid schedules on their family and personal interests. What is ironic is that these nurses only wanted to provide high quality care to patients and could have made excellent nurse managers, if the hospitals had been able to hold on to them.
Hospitals and Health Networks had an article in their April issue titled Nurturing Your Nurse Managers and they presented five retention factors for nurse managers from a study published in Nursing Economics in 2003. Well, I don't want to beat the drum too much, however, number 4 was Work/Life Balance and it included flexible scheduling and relief from constant on-call duty.
This article reminded me of my days teaching a a local university in the Health Systems Management Department. Most of the students in my classes were nurses and many had left their hospital job for jobs with payors in order to have a schedule, which would allow them to take evening classes and get advanced degrees in healthcare.
In our class discussions these nurses often talked about the impact of their rotating and/or rigid schedules on their family and personal interests. What is ironic is that these nurses only wanted to provide high quality care to patients and could have made excellent nurse managers, if the hospitals had been able to hold on to them.