Decision-making of early-career nurses in recruitment and retention

EMPOWER is a targeted research project addressing the persistent nursing shortage in Switzerland, with a focus on early-career nurses. Despite decades of policy efforts, continued shortages highlight the limitations of short-term solutions and underscore the need for a more rigorous, innovative approach – both to attract new talent and retain existing staff. Rather than relying only on self reported (explicit) job preferences, this project aims to uncover implicit preferences – as revealed through actual choices and trade-offs that early-career nurses are willing to make. Understanding preferences and trade-offs is essential to designing effective and sustainable workforce strategies. To achieve this, the project uses and adapts a specific Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) methodology developed by the Nursing Science Institute of the University of Basel, which is uniquely suited to identifying and quantifying real-world trade-offs. Because preference parameters emerge from choice behaviour, DCE development differs fundamentally from classical survey approaches. The insights gained will support the development of evidence-based recommendations to create working conditions that align with the expectations and priorities of the new generation of nurses.