Supporting Oncology Nurses: Beyond Resilience to Retention Strategies

What if the solution to retention is not asking healthcare workers to give more of themselves, but rather creating environments where they are supported to stay?

For the past 10 years, I have given my professional — and much of my personal — life to oncology nursing in many forms. I began as a patient care technician, then worked as an inpatient RN, moved into outpatient oncology nurse navigation, and now work as a hematology/oncology nurse practitioner. I absolutely love oncology care and all its incredibly rewarding and tragically heartbreaking relationships. This work allows me to use the strengths I was given and have worked toward to truly serve others. Sadly, after a few years, I began to feel like I couldn’t do it anymore.

In a single shift, I might admit a new leukemia patient, transfer another to the ICU with respiratory decompensation, tell a patient that their biopsy had indeed shown cancer, and tell a family that their loved one had died. And I wasn’t special. My colleagues were experiencing the same things.

Nurses’ Week came, and our hospital gave each of us a one-cent pen to thank us for our service. A patient we had fought cancer alongside for years died, and the death went unmarked by our unit leadership. Annual raises were cut, and attempts to boost morale with pizza parties were made. Patient care began to suffer. We were suffering. And yet, we were still asked to give more: more of ourselves, more shifts, more patients, all with less support.

Through all of this, I never doubted my calling to care for these patients. But I began to doubt my capacity to provide that care.

While in graduate school, I leaned into the research surrounding nursing retention. I learned that we are projected to face a 7.3 million-nurse deficit by 2030. The literature identified many causes of poor retention but provided little evidence on how to improve it — especially in oncology nursing. For this reason, I created RESET, a day-long retreat for oncology nurses focused on the leading reasons nurses leave the field. RESET provided connection with others in similar roles, honored the grief and loss experienced daily, and offered practical solutions for creating healthier work environments. It did not just invest in the work we do; it invested in the people doing the work.

What came from RESET was beautiful. I saw nurses laughing together to the point of tears. Eyes lit up when they realized that what they felt and experienced every day was shared, not solitary. Honest conversations about the realities of our work unfolded over good food and long tables. Participants told us they finally felt seen. One even told us that her Oura Ring indicated she experienced the least stress that day compared with her entire years’ worth of data.

It was clear that we had struck a chord, and we did not want to stop with one RESET event. We developed Supported to Stay as the next step in this vision's evolution. Through this work, we partner with healthcare organizations, leaders, and teams to move beyond asking individuals to simply become more resilient and instead give them opportunities to restore themselves and their calling. Retention is not solely an individual responsibility; it is shaped by culture, connection, leadership, and whether people feel seen and valued.

Supported to Stay is about matching our compassion to our capacity — creating the support, connection, and culture healthcare workers need to continue answering their call to care.

Leigh Flegge-Schlie, DNP, APRN, FNP, is a Doctor of Nursing Practice with Hematology Oncology of Indiana and the founder of Supported to Stay.