Factors Affecting Turnover of Nurses in Rural Lesotho

This book highlights challenges faced by nurses working in the rural areas and strategies to put in place to reduce rural nurse turnover. Many countries are faced with challenges in terms of their health systems, largely in the rural areas. These include severe human resource shortages. Most rural clinics are understaffed with nurses and are without doctors, physicians, pharmacists or other health professionals. Consequently, the burden of providing primary health care and improving access to other facilities has fallen on rural nurses. The widespread poverty prevailing in the rural areas caused a large number of the countries¿ population to use public health care as opposed to private health care. The trend of nurse migration is anticipated to continue until developed countries address the shortage of nurses and developing countries manage their factors. Among other factors, challenges are exacerbated by an increasing turnover of nurses from rural to urban areas, from nursing profession to other professions, from public health care centres to private ones, and from the country to other countries and to other international or overseas countries.