Abstract
As health care organizations struggle to fill their share of core vacant positions from a dwindling supply of registered nurses, there has been a focus on recruitment of nurses like never before. Investment in strategies to retain valuable and scarce nurse resources is necessary in order to create a sense of stability on the acute patient care unit (an attractive, but now seldom encountered, hospital environment characteristic). Once an atmosphere of work environment stability is established, nurses can be liberated and moved to focus on the meaning and value of the profession to the community, the nation, and the world.