To help find common ground with Gen Z, CNOs should focus on communication and flexibility.
Nowadays, there are plenty of issues in nursing to keep CNOs busy, but one of the biggest ones is nurse turnover.
As it stands now, the national RN turnover rate sits at about 16.4%. Press Ganey recently released the Nurse Experience 2025 report, which relies on feedback from over 500,000 RNs, APPs, and other clinical staff across the country. According to Jeff Doucette, CNO at Press Ganey, the report shows a decline in engagement with increasingly higher than expected turnover rates, which points to a gap between nurses and leaders.
In particular, the report stated that 24% of Gen Z RNs left the workforce in 2024. If CNOs want to maintain the sustainability of their workforces, reengaging Gen Z will be a key factor.
Here are three ways CNOs can reengage Gen Z nurses in the workforce.
Where nursing goes, so does a health system, says this CNO.
On this episode of HL Shorts, we hear from Jeff Doucette, CNO at Press Ganey, about the Nurse Experience 2025 report and what it means for nurse engagement. Tune in to hear his insights.
From easing discharge and enhancing safety to scaling Hospital at Home and solving workforce gaps, HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind participants are leading a quiet revolution.
Today’s virtual nursing strategy, as defined by participants in the 2025 HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, sponsored by Microsoft, is to expand platforms to create multiple points of value. Why? Well virtual nursing has quickly grown from a tightly scoped experiment into an enterprise-wide movement.
In some systems, it’s ballooned into a care coordination command center, a 24/7 telesitting service, a discharge coach, a patient-family liaison, even a remote workforce infrastructure. What was once a nurse-led innovation is now a proving ground for the entire health system's digital future.
And while some see scale and success, others are confronting hard questions: What’s the sustainable funding model? Who owns the technology? How do we protect the original mission? And how do we prevent virtual nursing from becoming just another layer of complexity that nurses have to manage?
In this report, HealthLeaders reconnects with the CNOs and virtual care champions within our Mastermind program to examine what’s changed, what’s working, and what’s getting dangerously lost in translation since last year’s program. The answers point to a future that’s bigger—and riskier—than anyone predicted.
Moving forward
This time around in the program, the participants have several new goals, and a few new frustrations. The name of the game now is expansion – whether that be into other areas in the health system, or sending the technology home with patients in hospital at home programs.
When considering the future of virtual care technology, the participants are dreaming bigger. In addition to using the technology for nursing, it's clear that the next step in the journey will be to involve multidisciplinary teams. If a health system is going to invest in new technology, why not apply it everywhere possible? Once it's been tested and implemented by nurses, of course.
The 2025 HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program brought together leading health systems in the nation like Geisinger Health System, Mount Sinai Health System, UnityPoint Health, Emory Healthcare, Jefferson Health, Houston Methodist, ChristianaCare, and many more, who are all advancing their virtual nursing programs.
Through virtual meetings and an in-person roundtable, the participating health systems combined their knowledge and experience to provide a framework for other health systems to learn from. Comprised of case studies, infographics, and trends compiled from our virtual and in person roundtables, we created a robust report where we dig into the details of what we learned about growing and expanding a successful virtual nursing program from the best in the country.
The HealthLeaders Mastermind series is an exclusive series of calls and events with healthcare executives. This Virtual Nursing Mastermind series features ideas, solutions, and insights on excelling your virtual nursing program.
To inquire about participating in an upcoming Mastermind series or attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.
If CNOs want to maintain the sustainability of their workforces, reengaging Gen Z nurses will be a key factor.
HealthLeaders spoke to Jeff Doucette, chief nursing officer at Press Ganey, about the Nurse Experience 2025 report and what it means for CNOs. Tune in to hear his insights.
Nurse leaders must take compassionate, proactive approaches to workplace violence prevention, says this CNO.
On this episode of HL Shorts, we hear from Terry Dillman, VP and CNO at Plainview Hospital and Syosset Hospital at Northwell Health, about workplace violence prevention and how to incorporate it when building hospital infrastructure. Tune in to hear her insights.
It's important for CNOs to refocus on why diversity is critical in the nursing profession.
Since the beginning of the year, stark criticism and negative connotations of the concept of DEI has swept throughout the country, pushed largely by the Trump Administration and their constituents.
But here’s the truth no one can scrub from a statute: nurses still show up every day to care for patients from every walk of life. They see the disparities. They feel the gaps. They know that representation, cultural humility, and inclusive environments aren’t political—they’re essential.
So, if the playbook has been stripped away, what’s next? How do nurse leaders preserve the spirit of diversity when the very terminology has been weaponized?
CNOs must build a robust, nursing-focused equity-minded program that benefits the nurse, the patient, and the organization. Here's how, according to the American Nurses Association (ANA).
CNOs must be ready to adapt to the generational differences that Gen Z nurses bring to the table.
Nowadays, there are plenty of issues in nursing to keep CNOs busy, but one of the biggest ones is nurse turnover.
As it stands now, the national RN turnover rate sits at about 16.4%. What does that number mean though and what should CNOs do about it?
Press Ganey recently released the Nurse Experience 2025 report, which relies on feedback from over 500,000 RNs, APPs, and other clinical staff across the country. According to Jeff Doucette, CNO at Press Ganey, the report shows a decline in engagement with increasingly higher than expected turnover rates, which points to a gap between nurses and leaders.
"We know that this engagement report and these statistics tend to be the earlier bellwether that there will be problems with quality, safety, and reliability in six to nine months from now if we don't pay attention to what's happening in with the workforce," Doucette said.
In particular, the report stated that 24% of Gen Z RNs left the workforce in 2024. If CNOs want to maintain the sustainability of their workforces, reengaging Gen Z will be a key factor.
Why are Gen Z nurses leaving?
According to Doucette, the reason for this Gen Z exodus from nursing has to do with unmet needs, centering around purpose, support, and alignment with their organizations.
"Gen Z clinical nurses generally have less [of a] feeling of psychological safety and they are experiencing significant cognitive overload and administrative burden, but they are less tolerant of the dysfunction that many of us have just learned to live with in healthcare environments," Doucette said.
Gen Z nurses also tend to want to see immediate solutions to complex problems that previous generations believe take more time to solve. Doucette emphasized that this departure has little to do with a lack of commitment and that the trend doesn't stop with healthcare.
"They're leaving because they're feeling like leadership is failing them in creating an environment [where] they can come to work every day and do their best work," Doucette said. "They simply will not stay in environments where they do not feel like their professional work is being supported, nor if they feel like their wellbeing is not supported."
Recapturing Gen Z's attention
The biggest difference between Gen Z employees and previous generations, anecdotally, is that they work to live, they don't live to work. To help find common ground with Gen Z, Doucette recommended that CNOs focus on two major strategies: communication and flexibility.
"When we as leaders create an environment that meets them where they are, they want a high degree of flexibility where they are in control of their work," Doucette said.
CNOs should consider reevaluating stringent scheduling guidelines to allow for more flexibility. Gen Z nurses also want clear routes to career progression. Doucette explained that rather than telling new nurses that they cannot progress as quickly as they want to, CNOs should direct them towards the pathway that will eventually get them to where they want to be. If there are no clear career pathways, nurses are less likely to want to stay at an organization.
"It's really important in those initial conversations to say, 'here's how your career progression can work at our health system,'" Doucette said. "'We might not be able to have you in a nurse manager job in six months, but we can certainly make sure that you're involved in shared governance and learning leadership skills and being a part of our leadership development program that we have for clinical nurses.'"
For CNOs, the key is to format communication in the manner that Gen Z communicates. Doucette pointed out that many members of Gen Z tend to have shorter attention spans, because they are adjusted to receiving information via TikTok or Instagram Reels.
"Chief nurses and nurse leaders who have TikTok channels and Instagram channels where they're sharing information with their staff in short snippet videos a couple times a week are showing very high engagement scores in terms of communication and connectivity and alignment with senior leadership with Gen Z's and millennials," Doucette said, "versus those that are still publishing a paper newsletter with a paycheck every two weeks."
This is part one of a two-part story. Part two will be published on Monday, August 4.
Workforce, workplace violence, healthcare equity, and succession planning are some of the biggest issues in nursing, says this CNO.
Growing up, Terry Dillman knew she wanted to help people.
After experiencing a medical emergency in her family when she was a teenager and witnessing what nurses were capable of, she decided she wanted to be a nurse. Dillman received her nursing degree from Queensborough College. In 2009, she went on to obtain her BSN, MSN, and MHA. She finished her doctorate in 2023 and has obtained her Nurse Executive certification.
Dillman joined Northwell Health as an emergency department nurse, sexual assault nurse examiner and has grown over the years in multiple roles including, assistant manager of the NSUH ED, administrator for hospital operations, PACU manager, director of perioperative services, director of cardiac services, and Magnet director. Under Theresa's purview, Lenox Hill, MEETH and LHGV achieved Magnet designation with multiple exemplars. Prior to her role as AED/CNO, she oversaw the strategy and execution for Magnet, education, research, and wound and ostomy teams.
Dillman now serves as VP and CNO at Plainview Hospital and Syosset Hospital, and has a passion for releasing nursing leadership growth and creating an atmosphere of support and transparency, seeking to learn and partner with others to develop high performance teams.
On our latest installment of The Exec, HealthLeaders speaks with Dillman about her journey into nursing, and her thoughts on trends in the nursing industry. Tune in to hear her insights.
In a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and principles are under fire, it's important for CNOs to understand the full scope of the issue.
Despite the scrutiny from the Trump Administration and the many executive orders targeting DEI programs, nurses still show up every day to care for patients from every walk of life.
Nursing itself is a diverse profession, and diversity in nursing helps improve patient outcomes. CNOs need to know the data if they want to make a case for continuing to promote diversity in their organizations.
Leaders should include frontline nurses when developing new protocols, says this CNO.
On this episode of HL Shorts, we hear from Nicole Telhiard, chief nursing officer at Our Lady of the Lake Health, about how other CNOs can go about implementing sepsis protocols in their emergency departments. Tune in to hear her insights.
