Factors affecting nurses retention during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

The global nursing shortage was a well-known issue before the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the current nursing workforce shortage and reduced nursing retention. This systematic review aimed to explore factors affecting retention of nurses. The PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and Proquest databases were searched for relevant primary studies published on nurses retention during Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, Google Scholar was searched for retrieving more related documents that may not be indexed in other searched databases. Inclusion criteria were research articles and gray literature related to nursing retention in Covid-19 pandemic, articles published in English, access to the full-texts, and without time limitation. Both qualitative and quantitative studies focusing on factors affecting the nurses retention were included. The Joanna Briggs Institute checklists were used for assessing quality of quantitative and qualitative studies. Qualitative and thematic content analysis methods based on Braun and Clark's model were used to analyze the data. Eighteen studies were identified through a systematic search of the literature. The results showed that seven factors include personal, interpersonal, organizational, social media, educational, emotional, and protective factors are the factors affect the nurses retention. The findings of this study showed that retention of nurse is complex and multi-factorial issue that factors from micro to macro-level affect it. Managers and health policy-makers based on the results obtained from this study can plan appropriate measures to increase the retention of nurses.