Aim: This study aimed to describe why registered nurses decide to leave their work and to investigate relationships between registered nurses' working life and turnover (leaving the unit vs. leaving the profession).
Background: Much research has explored nurses' intention to leave, whereas less research has looked at turnover and especially leaving the profession.
Methods: Data were collected using questionnaires and interviews.
Results: The three most common reasons for both groups (leaving the profession, n = 40; leaving unit but not profession, n = 256) were high workload, low salary and applied for and got a new job. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed statistically significant relationships between turnover and empowering structures, such as access to resources and informal power as well as the factor learning in thriving.
Conclusions: Structural empowerment, such as good access to resources and informal power, is important to keeping nurses in the profession, whereas learning seems to increase the risk of leaving the profession when variables such as vitality, resources, informal power and age are held constant.
Implications for nursing management: To counteract nurses leaving the profession, managers must provide nurses with good access to resources and informal power, such as networks within and outside the organisation, and focus on nurses' vitality.
Keywords: registered nurses; resigning; structural conditions; thriving; turnover.
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Nursing Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.