Nursing Retention Tools: Combat the Costs of High Turnover

Want to find nursing retention tools that help you increase the tenure of nurses on your staff? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s look at the state of turnover right now to identify the top reasons nurses say they’re leaving and find the right tools to help you reduce high turnover.

Nurse Retention: A Glimpse at Health Care Averages

A recent study from NSI Nursing Solution, published this year, collected data in 2024 across major health care organizations, focusing on hospitals. It found that:

• The national nurse turnover rate is 18.3%
• The national RN turnover rate is 16.4%
• The lowest areas of turnover are: pediatrics, women’s health, and surgical services
• The highest areas of turnover are: behavioral health, step down, and emergency services

This study includes data from previous years and does show an encouraging drop in turnover between 2-3% for nurses and RNs compared to 2023 data.

How Does Your Organization’s Turnover Compare?

This extensive study shared data on the different percentiles and we’ve included them here so you can understand statistically how your health care organization compares against national averages. If you lose about 1-2 nurses per every 10 you hire, you’re falling within the average for U.S. organizations. 

Hospital Turnover Rates:

• 90th Percentile: 14.4%
• 75th Percentile: 16.7%
• Median: 19.6%
• 25th Percentile: 22.9%
• 10th Percentile: 25.9%

The national average is 18.3%. View the report findings referenced in full here.

What’s a Good Turnover Rate?

In a perfect world, it’d be zero percent. But being realistic, the answer to this won’t be the same for every organization. There’s a lot at play in determining your ideal rate, including factors like your organization’s size, services or treatments, and current data around turnover.

That said, Gallup has found on average that 10% of a workforce is disengaged at any time. Their recommendation is to aim for a turnover rate of 10% based on their studies.

However, if we look at turnover data specific to health care right now, aiming for a 14% rate will put you in the top 10% of health care organizations.

What’s Driving Nursing Turnover in 2025?

To build effective nurse retention strategies, you have to first understand some of the reasons employees are leaving. While you can guess what some of them are, let’s look at data collected nationally from last year to examine the top 10 reasons nurses gave. If these are significant across the U.S. right now, they’re likely at play for your team too.

In the NSI report, the top 10 reasons nurses cited for exiting (in this order) included:

The Professional Portfolio Suite

What components are included in it:

• Demographic Data Collection Component – Simplifies the process for collecting individual education and certification data. Also makes it easy to export and fulfill ANCC requirements for Magnet® or Pathway to Excellence® designations.

• Professional Advancement Component – Offers a fully customizable career ladder advancement, achievement, and compensation tool for programs that are point based or requirement based.

How it helps with nurse retention:

In the top 10 reasons nurses cited for leaving, many said career advancement, education, salary, and working conditions/staffing ratios were factors. CHCI’s Professional Portfolio Suite gives you a practical way to execute health care workforce management and improve these different facets. 

The components above give your leadership and HR team a way to purposefully track the development of employees and ensure you’re providing the advancement and growth opportunities they want. It also helps you account for the goals of the organization (like special designations) and use data to identify staffing needs. Best of all, it saves individuals a lot of time in the process too, cutting down on hours spent doing administrative tasks. 

The Competency Suite

What components are included in it:

• Initial Competency Component – Having nurse onboarding competency software can help you start each new hire relationship on the right foot. This component supports both traditional and tiered orientation methods, and makes it simple to track the onboarding process, manage documentation, and tailor the first 90 days to individual needs so each new employee is ready to excel.

• Ongoing Competency Component – CHCI is the only platform on the market that has exclusive access to the Wright Competency Assessment Model™. (This component was actually co-designed with Donna Wright herself!) However, CHCI can be easily adapted to align with any competency framework, even if you do not use the Wright Competency Assessment Model™. 

• Peer Feedback Component – Create a culture of continuous improvement, prioritizing feedback and growth. This component helps you develop every team member with custom peer assessments that help you gather input across leadership, supervisors, and teams. It also provides an outlet for self-reflection.

How it helps with nurse retention:

Creating an effective competency program is proven to increase employee confidence and lead to better patient outcomes. Which in turn can lead to your employees feeling engaged and even proud of their work.

CHCI’s Competency Suite helps you digitize and tailor competency by individuals, teams, and across your organization. It also streamlines the administrative work behind it all, so employees can focus on what matters. 

Using our software can empower each employee to take control over their own competency, which opens up education and career opportunities while creating better working conditions for everyone. Which in turn, can make your health organization an environment that nurses enjoy working in and want to stay in.