Career development tool to support early career millennial nurses: A quality improvement project

Retention of millennial early career nurses (ECNs) remains a pressing challenge for the nursing profession. Millennial nurses prioritize career development, mentorship, and purposeful work, yet often perceive limited advancement opportunities within medical-surgical (med-surg) units. The absence of structured career development contributes to dissatisfaction, turnover, and high organizational costs. The Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) offers a framework to examine how self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals influence intent to stay. This quality improvement project evaluated whether a structured career development intervention, guided by SCCT, improved self-efficacy, outcome expectations, personal goals, and intent to stay among millennial ECNs in a med-surg unit. The project was conducted over eight weeks on a 19-bed gynecology–general surgery unit at an academic medical center. Five millennial ECNs participated in weekly 30–60 min coaching sessions using Webb et al. (2017) Career Mapping Tool. Coaching emphasized individualized goal setting, identification of advancement pathways, and resource alignment. Pre- and post-intervention surveys measured self-efficacy, outcome expectations, personal goals, and intent to stay. Results demonstrated statistically significant improvements in self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals. Intent to stay increased positively, though not at conventional significance (p = 0.106), consistent with the small sample size. Participants reported high satisfaction with structured career planning and coaching. Integrating career development interventions into professional practice may enhance retention, strengthen millennial nurses’ professional identity, and reposition med-surg nursing as a sustainable career choice. Structured career mapping, grounded in SCCT, is a promising strategy to improve retention outcomes among millennial ECNs and warrants further study on a larger scale.