Approximately 45% of all nurses and nursing assistants drop out during their training. After about two years, 14% of the graduates is no longer employed in health care. These figures are presented in labour market forecasts made by SEOR among employees in health care and welfare services. Together with a large number of health care and educational institutions, the Research Centre Innovations in Care of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences will start a four-year study into the causes of dropout amongst nursing students and new graduate nurses.
For this purpose three cohorts of 250 students enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing Programme will be followed for a period of 2.5 years. This will yield an instrument to timely recognize impending physical and mental overload amongst nurse students and new graduate nurses. This way preventive interventions can be deployed in time, to prevent mental and/or physical burden, ending the programme or leaving the nursing profession. The aim of SPRiNG (Studying Professional Resilience in Nursing students and new Graduates) is to set up an intervention to prevent these problems.
The primary objective of SPRiNG is measuring and monitoring the most important determinants for drop out as a result of the physical and mental workload of nursing students during their internships and education, and as new graduate nurses in the first year of their career. This way targeted preventive interventions can be implemented. In addition, this study will focus on protective factors against drop out. This knowledge will result in interventions, encouraging a healthy way of working. These interventions will be tested in the Bachelor of Nursing programme. Finally, the effects of the used interventions will be examined.