Nurses are leaving rural hospitals in alarming numbers as employers stray from core values of the profession, writes Susan Bragg.

Worldwide, nursing is facing a significant challenge in recruiting people into the profession and then retaining them in the workforce. This is especially true for Australian rural areas that are experiencing one of the greatest nursing shortages since settlement. As a registered nurse who had resigned from a rural hospital, I became increasingly alarmed at how many nurses were leaving these hospitals and I became concerned about the efficacy of current retention strategies. It appeared that we could recruit nurses, but not retain them; an exercise that I saw as fruitless. In order to...