Purpose: This study aimed to explore turnover rates for Korean acute care hospital nurses and identify
factors influencing their turnover.
Methods: The study was retrospective in nature. Nurse cohort data were obtained from hospital status
data from Korea's Health Insurance Review Assessment Service. The observation period was from January
1, 2012 to December 31, 2016, and data for 96,158 nurses were analyzed. Independent variables included
nurses' age and sex and hospital setting, type, ownership, and nurse staffing level. KaplaneMeier analysis
was performed to estimate survival curves, and factors influencing turnover were analyzed using Cox's
proportional hazard regression.
Results: The cumulative turnover probability for all nurses was .17, .29, .38, .45, and .50 for the first,
second, third, fourth, and fifth years, respectively. The results showed that the longer the career duration,
the lower the turnover rates. According to the factors influencing nurse turnover, both nurses' (i.e., sex
and career duration) and hospitals' (i.e., hospital setting, type, ownership, and nurse staffing level)
characteristics were statistically significant.
Conclusion: It should be noted that the turnover rate of nurses with less than three year of career
duration and of those with less than one year has been shown to be quite high. Therefore, target populations
for acute care hospital nurse turnover should be expanded from new graduate nurses to
experienced nurses with less than 3 years of career. Further studies are required to examine the causes of
high turnover rates in hospitals that are small and/or have low nurse staffing levels.