-- Hospitals already struggling to fill shifts may be overlooking one of the most preventable drivers of nurse attrition: preceptor bullying.
New graduate nurses — the backbone of the future workforce — are leaving within months of starting. Not because of patients, pay, or long shifts, but because the very colleagues tasked with guiding them often become their main source of hostility.
The scale is hard to ignore:
Up to 59% of new grads report bullying by senior staff, including preceptors.
Between 25-87% experience some form of incivility in their first year.
As many as 60% consider quitting within six months, with hostile preceptors a top reason.
Every departure costs hospitals tens of thousands of dollars in recruitment, orientation, and overtime. Multiply that by dozens of new nurses walking out each year, and the financial drain runs into millions — at the same time that more than half a million experienced nurses are set to retire by 2030.
Bullying is often brushed off as “part of the culture” or a “rite of passage,” but experts warn it is a self-inflicted wound. The data show that when preceptors become bullies, new nurses leave. When new nurses leave, hospitals lose both money and safe staffing levels.
Programs like EPIC Webinars are stepping into this gap — not by trying to “fix” preceptors, but by equipping new graduates with the real-world tools nursing school rarely teaches. Their workshops focus on how to respond to bullying and incivility on the ward, giving nurses strategies to stay, succeed, and protect themselves in hostile environments.
The nursing shortage is not only a supply-and-demand problem. It is also an internal culture problem — and hospitals that ignore it risk accelerating their own staffing crisis.
As one expert said, “The future of healthcare will be defined by how we support the people delivering it.”
Contact Info:
Name: Alison Prentice
Email: Send Email
Organization: EPIC Webinars
Address: Blair St., Quesnel, British Columbia V2J 5H1, Canada
Website: https://epicwebinars.com/epic-webinars-home
Release ID: 89169556