Building a successful RN compensation model.

The increasing demand for nurses in the United States has created a rivalry among healthcare institutions seeking to attract personnel with such enticements as sign-on bonuses, gift incentives, and rewards. Organizations may concentrate on recruitment incentives and ignore their core programs and staff retention efforts. At our large, tertiary academic medical center, we recognized the need to match our core values with long-term solutions to address the nursing work force shortage. One effort was aimed at developing a value-driven salary strategy that would be understandable, equitable, and future oriented and would positively affect job satisfaction among the registered nurse (RN) staff. Increasingly, healthcare institutions employ RNs in roles that move between the hospital setting and the