Editorial: The ageing nursing workforce: how can we avoid a retirement brain drain?

Nursing’s ageing workforce is the subject of increasing discussion and debate (Watson 2005, Lavoie-Tremblay et al. 2006). There are expectations of widespread retirements in the near future (Eley et al. 2007) and many areas and nursing specialties are threatened by the expected loss of large numbers of their workforce to retirement. This threat is true for clinical nurses (Halcomb et al. 2008), academic nurses (Kowalski et al. 2006) and nurse managers in metropolitan as well as rural and remote areas (Sullivan et al. 2008). The nurses who are facing imminent retirement have taken much in their stride. They have lived their careers during a period of enormous change in nursing and health care. They have been called upon to meet challenges associated with changed expectations of patients and families and changes in the characteristics of communities. Greatly increased global migration has changed previously monocultural communities into very diverse communities. This is the generation of nurses who have had to manage ‘new’ infectious diseases, lifestyle-related diseases and a whole raft of superbugs. They have had to face up to complex ethical issues that were probably unimagined and unimaginable for previous generations of nurses, such as administration of euthanatics (Van Bruchem-van de Scheur et al. 2008) and various reproductive technologies. In many countries, this was the first generation of nurses who established discrete advanced nursing roles, the first doctoral programs in nursing, who led the development of programs of nursing research and pioneered the notion of an evidence base for nursing. They have dealt with almost unbelievable growth in technology, changes to the ways nurses are educated and changes to the ways the workforce is organised. As a profession and a discipline, we stand to lose an enormous amount of our collective wealth of knowledge and wisdom in the loss of this generation to retirement. Indeed, the looming wave of retirement raises questions about the implications of such an exodus of experience, particularly at a time when nursing is already in a period of workforce pressure. As a very experienced generation withdraw from the workforce and enter retirement, there is a potential for a lack of depth of experience and knowledge at the bedside, in the classroom and in managerial positions. There is an increasing body of literature that considers ways that healthcare organisations might delay retirement of staff and retain nurses in the workforce for periods beyond their expected retirement age. Various strategies have been identified, including the provision of options for reduced working hours, a focus on healthier work environments, specific incentive programs and programs in which work intensity can be alleviated, such as reducing patient load, with a corresponding reduction in pay (Cyr 2005, Lavoie-Tremblay et al. 2006). However, in addition to exploring strategies for delaying retirements, there is also a need to explore innovative ways of maintaining connections with this valued and valuable generation of nurses, during their retirement years. So what are some of the options that could be considered in relation to the approaching wave of retirement? In seeking to explore the existence of a ‘shadow workforce’ of nurses no longer active in the profession, McIntosh et al. (2006) found that by far the majority of inactive nurses would not be willing to return to clinical practice work. However, although clinical practice work may not necessarily be ideal for this retiree group (given the level of work intensity that characterises many clinical environments), it is possible that retired nurses may seek alternative ways of remaining engaged with nursing. Writing in 1967, on the brink of her retirement, one nurse reflected on her impending retirement, as follows: