Literature Review of Turnover and Retention in the Nursing and Allied Health Professions

August 2025
Researcher: Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO)

HRRI & HumRRO partnered to conduct a literature review of turnover and retention in the nursing and allied health professions.

Authors

J. Freire

C. Blocker

J. Caramagno

Executive Summary

Turnover among nurses and the allied health workforce is a worldwide concern. In addition to individuals departing their employing organizations (organizational turnover), the exodus from their professions (occupational turnover) poses an additional layer of severity to the turnover issue. Workforce shortages across health disciplines affect patient-caregiver ratios, wait times, quality of care, and caregiver burnout. For employers, turnover creates organizational burdens like increased costs for hiring and training replacements, loss of institutional knowledge, and time to redistribute assignments to employees who stay. Given the high cost of attaining educational and licensure credentials in nursing and allied health fields, what compels some healthcare professionals to make the difficult decision to quit their jobs or even change their careers? Is there anything that organizational management and policy makers can do to retain their valued practitioners?

The Healthcare Regulatory Research Institute (HRRI) commissioned the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) to conduct a literature review of turnover and retention in the nursing and allied health professions (e.g., physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language pathology). The principal aims of the review were to understand:

How turnover and retention have been studied within the nursing and allied health professions.

Which factors promote or prevent turnover and retention among nurses and allied health professionals.

The review focused on peer-reviewed publications or PhD dissertations over the past 20 years that investigated or summarized the research on turnover and retention in the nursing and allied health professions. This resulted in a dataset of 39 articles included in the data analysis. Two research staff coded each publication by sample, study design, data collection method, country, and main variables. The variables were sorted into two overarching clusters: work characteristics and worker characteristics.

Browse Similar Research on HRRI.org

Well Being