Evaluating the Impact of Resilience-Building Interventions on Nurse Retention During Crisis Periods

Posted: Mar 04, 2022

• Ezra Porter
• Camila Barnes
• Anastasia Scott

Abstract

The global healthcare landscape has been characterized by unprecedented challenges in recent years, with crisis conditions becoming increasingly common across healthcare systems. Nurse retention has emerged as a critical concern, particularly during periods of organizational stress, resource constraints, and public health emergencies. Traditional approaches to addressing nurse turnover have often focused on compensation, scheduling adjustments, or workplace environment improvements. However, these conventional strategies have demonstrated limited effectiveness during sustained crisis periods, suggesting the need for more innovative approaches centered on building psychological and organizational resilience. This research introduces a novel framework for understanding and addressing nurse retention through targeted resilience-building interventions. Unlike previous studies that have treated resilience as either an individual psychological trait or an organizational capacity, our approach integrates both perspectives through a comprehensive intervention model. We posit that effective retention strategies during crisis periods must address both the individual nurse's capacity to withstand stress and the organizational structures that support collective resilience. Our study addresses three primary research questions that have received limited attention in the existing literature. First, how do different types of resilience-building interventions compare in their effectiveness for improving nurse retention during crisis conditions? Second, what mechanisms explain the relationship between resilience interventions and retention outcomes, particularly regarding the interplay between individual psychological factors and social network dynamics? Third, how do contextual factors, such as crisis severity and organizational culture, moderate the effectiveness of resilience interventions? The novelty of our approach lies in both the intervention design and the methodological framework. We developed three distinct intervention types that target different aspects of resilience: individual psychological capacity, peer support