Retaining wisdom in the nursing workforce

Title: Retaining Wisdom in the Nursing Workforce Program

The recent National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses shows the average age of the RN population was estimated to be 46.8 years of age. As these nurses approach their retirement age, 77 million baby boomers move to advanced ages and it will increase the needs for both acute care and chronic care. Therefore, it will exacerbate existing nursing workforce shortage even further.

The current economic and social trends encourage more individuals to delay retirement to improve financial security. These current economic and social trends also impact retired nurses to consider returning to nursing workforce for financial security and/or professional satisfaction. However, these retired and experienced nurses who left clinical practice for a while may need to refresh their clinical skills to rejoin nursing workforce. Furthermore, these retired and experienced nurses may need less physically demanding to retain them in nursing workforce. Therefore, the Retaining Wisdom in the Nursing Workforce Program is design to improve nursing workforce shortage by providing grant funds to those who provide clinical training for retired and experienced nurses to refresh their clinical skills to rejoin nursing workforce and/or other innovative training for older and experienced nurses to take on other roles that are less physically demanding to retain them in nursing workforce. This program addresses the aging of the nursing workforce and the need to retain older and experienced nursing workforce to improve the current or anticipated nursing workforce shortage in the local, state and national levels.