Hindawi Publishing Corporation ISRN Nursing Volume 2013, Article ID 916061, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/916061 Research Article Young Registered Nurses’ Intention to Leave the Profession and Professional Turnover in Early Career: A Qualitative Case Study Mervi Flinkman, 1 Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret, 2 and Sanna Salanterä 1,3 1 Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland 2 Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, 00014 Helsinki, Finland 3 Hospital District of Southwest Finland, Bureau of Administration, Turku University Hospital, P.O. Box 52, 20521 Turku, Finland Correspondence should be addressed to Mervi Flinkman; mervi.linkman@utu.i Received 8 June 2013; Accepted 9 July 2013 Academic Editors: S. Keeney and J. Scholes Copyright © 2013 Mervi Flinkman et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In a time of global nursing shortages an alarming number of young registered nurses have expressed a willingness to leave the profession. In this qualitative case study we investigate in depth why young nurses leave nursing profession and reeducate themselves for a new career. he study is based on longitudinal interviews of three young registered nurses in Finland. hese nurses were irst interviewed between December 2006 and May 2007, when they were 29–32 years old and having an intention to leave the profession. he second interview took place four years later, from January 2011 to March 2011 when all of them had made the transition to a new career. Data were analyzed in two stages. In the irst stage, comprehensive career story narratives were formed on the basis of the interviews. In the second stage, emerging themes in these stories were compared, contrasted, and interpreted in the context of the overall career histories. Nursing as a second career choice and demanding work content as well as poor practice environment and the inability to identify with the stereotypical images of nurses were main themes that emerged from these career stories. he results of this interpretative qualitative study relect a shit toward insights into understanding professional turnover as a complex and long-lasting process. 1. Introduction Nurses are the largest group of professionals within the global health care system, with a total of 19.3 million nursing and midwifery personnel in the world [1]. he current and growing shortage of registered nurses (RNs) in health care systems is thus a global concern [2, 3]. In fact, the European Commission has estimated that there will be a shortage of 590,000 nurses by the year 2020 [4]. In the United States, employment of RNs is expected to grow faster than the expected average for all occupations [5]. Most countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have reported a nursing shortage [6], which is predicted to get worse because the current nursing population is aging [7]. his shortage of RNs inluences the delivery of health care and negatively afects patient outcomes; an insuicient nurse staing level is associated with negative patient outcomes [8, 9] and decreased nurse job satisfaction [10]. At the same time of this global nursing shortage, many nurses are considering leaving their job, profession or are out of the nursing workforce. According to Flinkman et al. [11] literature review, nurses’ intention to leave the profession varied from 4% up to 54% across the studies internationally. In a NEXT (nurses early exit) study, conducted in ten European countries ( = 30,330), 13% of nurses had thought about leaving the profession frequently [12]. According to an RN4CAST (nurse forecasting in Europe) study ( = 33,659 nurses/Europe; 27,509 nurses/United States), the proportion of nurses planning to leave their current job ranged from 49% (Finland, Greece) to 14% (United States) [13]. In European sample of this study, every tenth (9%) of nurses was having intention to leave the profession [14]. Furthermore, in Salmi- nen [15] study, nearly half (37%,  = 343) of young RNs (under 35 years) working in hospitals have reported frequent intention to leave the profession in Finland. In Sweden, 10– 20% of new graduates have considered leaving the profession [16]. In the United States, it was reported that the percentage