40% of nurses plan to leave or retire within 5 years

According to the 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study, 39.9% of RNs and 41.3% of LPN/VNs reported intent to leave nursing or retire within five years. Over 138,000 nurses have already left since 2022. The top reason (41.5%) is stress and burnout, not compensation. So what? Unlike normal labor market churn, nursing has a 4+ year training pipeline — these departures cannot be backfilled quickly. So what? The nurses leaving are disproportionately experienced mid-career clinicians who serve as preceptors and mentors; their departure removes the institutional knowledge that trains the next generation. So what? New graduate nurses, already entering understaffed units, burn out faster without experienced mentorship, creating a doom loop of attrition. Why does this persist? Healthcare organizations treat burnout as an individual resilience problem (offering yoga and meditation apps) rather than a systemic workload problem. Staffing decisions are made by finance departments optimizing labor costs, not by clinicians assessing safe capacity.