Implications for practice and research

• The association between leaving intentions and burnout gives policymakers and nurse managers the opportunity to pay attention to burnout and its precursors as potential drivers of professional leaving.

• The study has the same limitations of many cross-sectional studies by focusing on work life and omitting contextual factors such as economic and family background.

• Future studies should consider actual leaving rather than intentions, adopt more developed models of organisational leaving1 and prospective designs.

Context

Nursing shortages are a recurrent problem in healthcare systems worldwide. Two basic mechanisms are considered to maintain and develop a sufficient nursing workforce: first, increasing the inflow of personnel into the active nursing workforce (eg, through training or immigration) and second, …