For love or money: registered nurses who return to hospital practice.

AIM: This commentary explores the value that returning nurses bring to the hospital setting. BACKGROUND: Nurses who have left hospital practice, usually due to family obligations, often return once the children are older. They return because they love nursing or they need to make money. They are at a point in their lives where they want to make a difference and miss the nurse-patient relationship. During recessions, nurses return to hospital practice because recessions tend to affect male dominated occupations. EVALUATION: Research and policy literature on the returning and/or older nurse was reviewed with a focus on the benefits and challenges of having returning nurses in hospital practice. KEY ISSUES: Returning nurses serve as role models to younger nurses. They also bring experiential knowledge to patient situations. CONCLUSION: There is limited research on this group of nurses. Yet they are ready for reentry in short order during nursing shortages. When they return, they add value to the hospital unit. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Returning nurses want shorter workdays, alternative roles, and less physically taxing work. This can be achieved by offering flexible scheduling and work hours, creating niche roles and providing a more worker friendly physical environment.

It starts with a conversation: a community approach to creating healthy work environments.

A healthy work environment is needed to retain nurses. Among the factors that contribute to a healthy work environment are collaboration and communication. Through the leadership of the Palm Healthcare Foundation, Inc., a dialogue was started among health care stakeholders in Palm Beach County, Florida, resulting in a health care work force partnership community collaboration and initiatives to address the retention of nurses. One initiative was sponsoring a "train-the-trainer" program to raise awareness and provide skills for addressing factors that could affect work relationships, including emotional intelligence, generational differences, cultural competency and health literacy, employee crisis, and horizontal violence. A 6-month program evaluation was completed by the participants. A community approach provides a means for providers and educators to address common work force issues collaboratively.