BU Research Blog

Bournemouth University in collaboration with Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (RBCH) held a very successful conference (sold out!) on July 1^st to discuss the topic of nurse retention and our Burdett Trust for Nursing funded research project- Making TRACS to improve nurse retention (Principal Investigator- Janet Scammell). This conference attracted 100 attendees representing nurse clinicians, workforce developers, and education and training from across Dorset.

Nurse retention is a highly problematic concern across the UK and negative impacts are felt within patient quality of care, individuals’ wellbeing and healthcare systems. To address this issue, this project aimed to investigate whether the retention of registered nurses at RBCH can be improved through the use of the TRACS nurse retention model.  Developed from an extensive literature review, the TRACS model focuses on key factors known to impact on intention to stay: supporting Transition at key career junctures, building Resilience, facilitating Authentic leadership throughput the organisation, securing Commitment to support changing work practices and providing on-going Support for staff.

Incorporating the elements of the TRACS model and involving registered nurses from RBCH in what is needed to improve nurse retention, this project developed the online resource- Support4Nurses http://support4nurses.uk/. This was presented at the conference as well as our key findings of the three main areas to improve nurse retention: staff development, authentic leadership and valuing staff, and supporting health and wellbeing. Future plans are to work with RBCH to implement learning from this project at a local level as well as share our approach and outcomes more widely.

We will be posting slides of the presentations on our website in the coming weeks. If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Janet Scammell at jscammell@bournemouth.ac.uk.