Things are getting better for nurses in Michigan, but understaffing and burnout remain high.

Chris Friese was the principal investigator of the 2023 University of Michigan Nurses Study, and says conditions improved over 2022, but there was still room for improvement.

“We wanted to see, are things getting better? And what we found in 2023 is that 32% of nurses are planning to leave their position. So we’re still over a third of the nurses in our survey are planning to leave their positions. The good news is things at least seem to be moving in the right direction.”

Friese says they found that 13% of those leaving planned to exit the nursing profession entirely, excluding retirements. He says something especially concerning is that these are younger nurses in the workforce.