Nurse Profiles and Retention: Insights for Creating Sustainable and Engaging Work Environments

In the post-pandemic era, nurse turnover intention (TI) in public hospitals has become a pressing issue, worsened by staffing shortages and increased patient needs. Based on the Job Demands-Resources Model, this study analyzes the profiles of nurses at higher risk of TI, in particular requesting department transfers (Internal Turnover, IT), leaving their organizations (External Turnover, ET), or exiting the profession (LP). A sample of 273 nurses from Northern Italy completed a survey on personal/job demands (Workload and Work-Life Interference), resources (Psychological Capital, Quality of Leadership and Meaning of Work), and outcomes (Burnout, Work Engagement, and Turnover Intention). Two step clustering method with squared Euclidean distances and k-means procedures were used to group individuals. Cluster analysis identified three groups: (a) “The Lonely Castaways” (18.3%), (b) “The Equilibrists” (39.4%), and (c) “The Accomplished and Resilient” (42.3%). MANOVAs results showed differences between groups in the level of Burnout and Work Engagement. The Chi-square test of independence, on the other hand, shows that groups (a) and (b) show the higher level of IT compared to group (c). Group (c) shows the lowest level also of ET compared to other groups. Finally, in terms of LP, group (a) shows the highest level compared to the other groups. By demonstrating that the presence of different levels of personal/job demands and resources are associated with different levels of nurses’ TI, these findings provide valuable insights to develop targeted strategies to enhance the well-being and reduce TI of specific groups of nurses.