The success of any emergency department hinges on having quality staff to carry out the compassionate mission of health care. Attracting and keeping quality staff is, therefore, an important consideration for managing a department. Attendees at Emergency Nursing 2025 in New Orleans will learn the secrets of staff retention and engagement from an award-winning ED that has shown dramatic reductions in turnover in just two years.
Nicolette Cuevas, BSN, RN, CEN
Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, Virginia, received a 2024 Lantern Award for developing retention and engagement strategies that yielded remarkable results: From 2022 to 2024, the ED’s overall staff turnover dropped from 40 percent to 26 percent. Even more impressively, first-year nursing turnover decreased from 39 percent to just 11 percent in the same period.
“We were asking ourselves, ‘Why have we stayed? What has made us happy in our positions?’” said Midshift Nurse Manager Nicolette Cuevas, BSN, RN, CEN, who has been at RRMC for eight years and in her current position for three.
Reflecting on their success, the department’s three nurse managers felt they had an opportunity to help other EDs reach similar goals. Cuevas will present the session “Sustaining Success: The Power of Retention and Engagement,” alongside Night Shift Nurse Manager Kristy Makula, MSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, TCRN, SCRN, NE-BC, CBRN, and Day Shift Nurse Manager Mary Clouatre, BSN, RN, CEN.
Cuevas said the department has received feedback that it excels in three particular areas: scheduling for work-life balance, morale on the floor and engagement with the leadership team. The RRMC contingent will share how they excel in these areas and more.
The presentation will be structured around Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where focus starts on meeting the most basic physiological needs of a person and then proceeding to more mental and emotional needs. “We took a very throwback approach,” said Cuevas on why the session was structured as such. “We didn’t just want to have a list of the things we’re doing.” She said the presentation will be “about 25 percent data,” including retention numbers, but the other 75 percent “is truly about what we’ve done as a department.”
“Whether you’ve been a nurse for 15 years or five seconds, it’s that personal engagement with leadership and the team that you’re looking for,” said Cuevas.