When Will Faculty Retire?: Factors Influencing Retirement Decisions of Nurse Educators

Abstract

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional study surveyed a random sample of 129 nurse educators teaching in 61 U.S. schools of nursing. After the educators indicated their desire to participate, the survey instrument was e-mailed to them for completion; a 37.6% response rate was obtained. Demographically, the typical respondent was a healthy, 52-year-old, Caucasian female with a PhD in nursing. Outcomes reflected that respondents’ mean anticipated age of retirement was 64.4; however, the optimal age of retirement desired by respondents was younger (62.4). The most influential factor affecting the timing of retirement was financial status. Workplace issues, personal and family health, and attitudes about retirement were other factors that affected participants’ retirement decisions. The study findings indicate that nurse educators, as a group, do not plan to work beyond age 65. AUTHORS Received: November 3, 2004 Accepted: April 1, 2005 Dr. Kowalski is Associate Professor of Nursing, Dr. Dalley is Assistant Professor of Nursing, and at the time this article was written, Ms. Weigand was a graduate assistant, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Nursing, Las Vegas, Nevada. Address correspondence to Susan D. Kowalski, PhD, RN, Associate Professor of Nursing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Nursing, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-3018; e-mail: Susan.Kowalski@unlv.edu.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 34 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.