| Course | NR 529 Leadership and Management within the Clinical Healthcare Environment |
|---|---|
| Week | 7 |
| Paper type | Retention plan |
| Length | About 1,120 words, 3 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN, Nurse Executive |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 529 Week 7
Retention Plan: Nine Nurses Who Left in Twelve Months, Three of Them to Outpatient Dialysis Centers, and a Costed Case for Keeping the Ones We Could Have Kept
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 529: Leadership and Management within the Clinical Healthcare Environment
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Retention Plan: Nine Nurses Who Left in Twelve Months, Three of Them to Outpatient Dialysis Centers, and a Costed Case for Keeping the Ones We Could Have Kept
Starting From the Leavers
In the twelve months to June, nine registered nurses left the renal and urology unit where I am the manager, from 46 budgeted positions. That is a turnover rate of about 20%, counting every nurse who left the unit for any reason. Published turnover rates vary widely depending on whether they count transfers, retirements and nurses who leave nursing altogether, so a unit's rate means little until its definition is stated (Kovner et al., 2014). Mine counts everyone, because every departure left a vacancy.
Rather than start from national causes of turnover, this plan starts from the nine people. I reviewed each exit interview, spoke with five of the nine by phone and checked their schedules for the six months before they gave notice. Table 1 summarizes what I found.
Table 1
Registered Nurse Leavers, July to June
| Nurse | Time on unit | Where they went | Main reason given |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8 months | Emergency department, another hospital | Wanted a different specialty |
| 2 | 11 months | Outpatient dialysis center | Day hours, no weekends or holidays |
| 3 | 14 months | Outpatient dialysis center | Day hours; felt alone on nights |
| 4 | 16 months | Outpatient dialysis center | No weekends; predictable schedule |
| 5 | 20 months | Travel nursing | Pay |
| 6 | 3 years | Travel nursing | Pay; schedule control |
| 7 | 4 years | Moved out of state | Spouse's job |
| 8 | 6 years | Part-time elsewhere during NP school | No part-time option here |
| 9 | 22 years | Retired | Retirement |
Which Nurses the Plan Is For
Two departures, the move out of state and the retirement, were not preventable, and the plan does not try to prevent them. The two travel departures were mainly about pay, which a unit manager cannot match. That leaves five nurses whose reasons were within reach: three who went to outpatient dialysis, one who left to study and one who wanted a different specialty.
Five of the nine left within their first two years. A review of the turnover literature found that early-career nurses leave at higher rates and that job satisfaction, workload, scheduling and support from managers and colleagues are consistent predictors of whether nurses stay (Hayes et al., 2012). Our leavers fit that pattern closely. The nurses who went to outpatient dialysis were not leaving renal nursing. They were leaving our schedule, and two of them said they had felt unsupported on nights in their first year.
The plan therefore targets two groups: nurses in their first two years, and experienced renal nurses who could take their skills to an outpatient center.
Interventions
Support through the first year. New graduates currently have a preceptor for twelve weeks and then work independently, often on nights. Research on new graduate transition describes a period of shock in the first months of practice, when the gap between what nurses expected and what they find is widest (Duchscher, 2009). From September, each new graduate will have a named mentor, different from the preceptor, for the full first year, with protected one-hour meetings at three, six, nine and twelve months. Mentors will be experienced nurses who volunteer and receive a stipend. New graduates will not be scheduled for more than half their shifts on nights in the first six months after orientation.
A renal resource role. The outpatient centers offer something we can partly match: a role built around dialysis expertise. Experienced nurses may apply to serve as the unit's renal resource nurse for two day shifts a month, carrying a lighter assignment and supporting dialysis preparation, access checks and teaching. This gives experienced nurses a reason to stay that is not about hours.
Weekend and schedule predictability. Schedules will be posted six weeks ahead instead of four. Nurses with more than two years on the unit may choose every third weekend rather than every other weekend if enough nurses opt in to keep coverage, which a trial month will test.
A part-time option. Nurses in graduate school may drop to 0.6 of a full-time position for up to two years, with first priority on returning to full time. The nurse who left for school said she would have stayed on those terms.
Stay conversations. I will meet each nurse once a year to ask what would make them leave, before they decide to.
The Cost of Leaving and the Cost of the Plan
Using our own figures, one registered nurse departure costs the unit about $38,900. That estimate includes 480 paid orientation hours for a replacement at a loaded rate of $50, or $24,000; about eleven weeks of incentive and agency premium to cover the vacancy, about $11,900; and roughly $3,000 in recruitment and onboarding costs. Across nine departures, the year cost about $350,000, most of which never appeared on a single line of the budget.
The plan costs about $14,200 a year: six mentor stipends of $1,500 ($9,000), protected mentor meetings for eight new graduates at four hours each for both people ($3,200) and training for the renal resource nurses ($2,000). The renal resource shifts use existing staffing. Stay conversations use my time. If the plan keeps one nurse a year who would otherwise have left, it pays for itself more than twice over.
Measuring the Plan
I will track three measures quarterly: turnover of nurses in their first two years, the number of nurses leaving for outpatient dialysis and the proportion of new graduates still on the unit at eighteen months. The eighteen-month figure matters most, because all five early leavers went between eight and twenty months. I will also count mentor meetings actually held, since a mentor program that exists on paper but whose meetings are dropped whenever staffing is short will not help anyone.
Retention plans often fail because they are written for nurses in general. This one is written for the nurses we lost, and I will revise it each year against the nurses who leave next. I will also share the leaver table, without names, with the staff council, because nurses who can see why colleagues left are often the best source of ideas for keeping the ones who remain. Two of the interventions above, the part-time option and the renal resource role, came from conversations with nurses who were still on the unit and had been thinking about leaving.
References
Duchscher, J. E. B. (2009). Transition shock: The initial stage of role adaptation for newly graduated registered nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(5), 1103-1113. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04898.x
Hayes, L. J., O'Brien-Pallas, L., Duffield, C., Shamian, J., Buchan, J., Hughes, F., Laschinger, H. K. S., & North, N. (2012). Nurse turnover: A literature review: An update. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 49(7), 887-905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2011.10.001
Kovner, C. T., Brewer, C. S., Fatehi, F., & Jun, J. (2014). What does nurse turnover rate mean and what is the rate? Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 15(3-4), 64-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527154414547953
The Chamberlain NR 529 Week 7 instructions
In Week 7 you usually develop a plan to improve staff retention on a unit. Prompts ask for turnover data or causes, target groups, evidence-based interventions, costs and expected outcomes, and how success will be measured. Start from the people who actually left, if you have that information, and sort departures into those a manager could influence and those they could not. Target interventions at the preventable groups. State how you define turnover, since published rates differ by definition. Cost both the problem and the plan with figures you can explain. Choose measures that match the timing of departures. Retention and transition research should support each intervention, cited in APA 7, inside the page limit you were given.
How the NR 529 Week 7 example is put together
The plan begins by defining turnover for the unit and presenting Table 1, nine leavers with tenure, destination and reason. A section separates the two unavoidable departures and the two driven by travel pay from the five within reach, then shows that early-career nurses and dialysis-bound nurses are the targets. Interventions follow: a named mentor for a year with meetings at three-month intervals, a limit on nights after orientation, a renal resource role for experienced nurses, schedules posted six weeks ahead with an every-third-weekend trial, a part-time option for graduate students and annual stay conversations. A costing section estimates each departure and the plan. The measures section tracks eighteen-month retention and mentor meetings held.
Where the points sit in the NR 529 Week 7 rubric
Retention plan rubrics typically reward accurate use of turnover data, clearly identified target groups, interventions supported by evidence, realistic costs and measurable outcomes. Graders give the most credit to plans that follow from the unit's own data rather than general causes. Separating preventable from unavoidable turnover shows analysis. Interventions tied to specific reasons for leaving, with sources on transition or turnover, meet the evidence criterion. A cost comparison that shows the arithmetic makes the case to leadership and usually scores under feasibility. Measures that match the pattern of departures, such as retention at eighteen months, demonstrate planning. Presentation points cover the table, the section order and reference format.
NR 529 Week 7 help: mistakes that cost points
The weakest retention plans list popular strategies, such as recognition programs and better communication, without showing why nurses on this unit left. Begin with the leavers. Another problem is trying to prevent every departure, including retirements and relocations, which spreads the plan thin. Students also propose raises a unit manager cannot grant; stay within what a manager could start, or say who would need to approve it. Costs are often missing or unexplained, so show each figure. Avoid measures that cannot change within a year. Protect the identities of former colleagues. Finally, check that each intervention answers a reason in your data. If none of the leavers mentioned it, it probably does not belong in the plan.
Get a NR 529 Week 7 example written to your instructions
Send the prompt, any data set your section supplies and the rubric, and we will write a custom NR 529 retention plan against those materials, costed and aimed at a named group. It is built for your section rather than adapted from another version, the first example is free, and it comes back inside 24-48h.
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NR 529 Week 7 questions, answered
Where do I get the reasons people left?
Exit interviews are the obvious source and the least reliable one, because people leaving rarely say the difficult thing to somebody who still signs their reference. The better material comes from stay conversations with the nurses who have not left, and from what the writer already knows. Real exit interview records held by an employer should stay there; the pattern can be described in your own words without them.
Can I propose something my organization would never approve?
You can, if the paper acknowledges it and prices it anyway, but the stronger plans stay inside what a unit manager could actually start. A self-scheduling change, a different way of allocating weekends, a preceptor stipend and a fixed check-in at three months are all within reach. Redesigning the pay structure is a different course and a different level of decision.
How many sources does this week usually want?
Whatever the rubric states, and it varies more than students expect. What matters is placement: evidence attached to the mechanism behind an intervention, explaining why a structured first-year program changes anything, does more than five references establishing that turnover is expensive. A single study understood well and pointed at one group beats a page of general citation on the nursing workforce.
Where can I find a free NR 529 Week 7 sample paper?
Shown above with its leaver table, the nine-departure retention plan is the full NR 529 Week 7 sample, and reading it is free. If you want a plan built from your own unit's departures, share them in our request form and one can be written to fit.
How do I cost a retention plan for NR 529?
Estimate what one departure costs, including orientation, vacancy cover and recruitment, then price each intervention. The sample puts one departure at about $38,900 and the plan at about $14,200 a year, so keeping one nurse covers it.