| Course | HLTH 4373 Human Resources for Healthcare Administrators |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | Retention strategy and measurement plan |
| Length | 1,170 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | B.S. in Healthcare Administration |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for HLTH 4373 Module 5
Reasons to Stay Past Year Two: A Retention Strategy and Measurement Plan for Early-Career Therapists at an Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospital
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH4373: Human Resources for Healthcare Administrators
Module 5 Assignment
Instructor Name
November 2, 2026
Where the Hospital Loses Therapists
The workforce plan written for the therapy department earlier in this course showed that recruitment alone cannot close the gap at our composite rehabilitation hospital, because the department loses therapists nearly as fast as it hires them. Last year, 11 of the department's roughly 24 therapists left, and a closer look at the departures shows a pattern hidden inside the overall rate. Of the 11, seven had been with the hospital less than two years, and six of those seven were new graduates hired into their first job. Three departures were retirements or relocations the hospital could not have prevented, and one was a therapist whose performance problems the department had been addressing.
The losses among early-career therapists are the expensive ones. The hospital estimates each departure costs about $38,000 once agency coverage during the vacancy, recruitment, orientation and the months before a new therapist reaches full productivity are added up. Seven early departures cost about $266,000, more than the entire retention budget proposed in this plan.
Not All Turnover Is the Same
Allen et al. (2010) argue that organizations often manage retention on mistaken beliefs, among them that all turnover is equally harmful, that pay is the main reason people leave and that a single program can work for everyone. Their evidence-based alternative starts by separating turnover the organization can influence from turnover it cannot and by focusing on the employees whose loss does the most damage. For this hospital, that means the strategy is built for therapists in their first two years. Retirements call for succession planning, not retention, and the departure of a struggling performer is not a failure of retention at all.
The exit interviews support the same caution about pay. Only one of the seven early-career therapists named salary as the main reason for leaving, and the hospital's pay is near the market median. The reasons they gave were the weekend rotation, feeling unsupported with complex patients in the first year, and a sense that the job offered no path forward. Raising pay across the board would cost more than the entire plan and would not address any of these.
Why Embeddedness Fits This Group
Mitchell et al. (2001) proposed job embeddedness as an explanation of why people stay, as distinct from why they leave. Embeddedness has three parts: links, the connections a person has with colleagues and the community; fit, how well the job matches the person's skills, interests and plans; and sacrifice, what a person would give up by leaving. In their studies of grocery store and hospital employees, embeddedness predicted voluntary turnover over and above job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The idea suits early-career therapists because they arrive with few links, their professional interests are still forming, and a first job typically offers little they would lose by moving on.
Rubenstein et al. (2018) pooled decades of studies on what comes before a voluntary resignation and placed embeddedness among the stronger predictors, alongside attitudes toward the job and the organization. The strategy that follows is therefore organized around the three parts of embeddedness, with each element answering a reason the exit interviews gave. A new graduate who has a mentor, a specialty and a reason to be here in three years is much harder to recruit away than one who has only a paycheck.
Building Links
Every new therapist will be paired with a mentor from the same discipline for the first year, chosen from experienced therapists who volunteer and receive a small stipend and four hours of training. Mentors and new therapists will meet weekly for the first three months and every other week after that, with protected time on the schedule. Complex patients will be co-treated with the mentor during the first 90 days, which answers the most painful exit-interview theme: being alone with a patient whose needs exceeded the new therapist's skill. New graduates hired in the same year will form a cohort that meets monthly for case discussion, and the hospital will fund membership in the state professional association, which connects them to peers beyond the building. Mentors will also be asked to watch for early warning signs, such as a new therapist regularly staying late or quietly avoiding complex cases, so that support arrives before a resignation letter does.
Improving Fit and Raising the Cost of Leaving
Fit will be improved by letting therapists grow toward the specialty that drew them to rehabilitation. After their first year, therapists will choose a focus in stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury or amputee rehabilitation and rotate onto that team, with continuing education funding directed to it. The department will create a clinical specialist step on the pay scale, reached through a documented portfolio and, where one exists, a specialty certification, so that growth does not require leaving for a management job or another employer. The weekend-only positions in the workforce plan will reduce rotations for everyone to one weekend in four, and the plan will let therapists trade weekends through a shared schedule.
Sacrifice, the third part of embeddedness, will be strengthened through the loan repayment benefit, which will vest annually over three years rather than being paid at hire, and through the specialist step itself, which a therapist would forfeit by leaving. These measures do not trap anyone; they give early-career therapists something real to weigh against an offer from an outpatient clinic.
Cost of the Strategy
The plan's direct costs in its first year are about $142,000: mentor stipends and protected time, $46,000; loan repayment for up to 12 therapists, $60,000; specialist step increases for an expected four therapists, $16,000; association memberships and cohort sessions, $8,000; and added continuing education, $12,000. The weekend-only positions were costed in the workforce plan and are not counted again here. If the strategy prevents four of the seven early departures seen last year, it saves about $152,000, more than it costs, before counting the fewer days beds are held for lack of therapists.
Measuring Retention
Seven measures will show whether the plan works. The primary measure is two-year retention of therapists hired as new graduates, with a target of 75% against last year's figure below 40%. Supporting measures are first-year retention by discipline; voluntary turnover among all therapists, reported separately from retirements and dismissals; the share of departures the hospital classifies as preventable after each exit interview; agency therapy hours; the number of days beds are held; and a short annual survey based on the three parts of embeddedness, asking therapists how connected they feel to colleagues, how well the job fits their plans and what leaving would cost them personally. Results will be reported to the chief executive every quarter, and the mentoring program will be reviewed after the first cohort completes its year. If two-year retention has not improved after 24 months, the hospital will revisit the design rather than simply adding money to it.
References
Allen, D. G., Bryant, P. C., & Vardaman, J. M. (2010). Retaining talent: Replacing misconceptions with evidence-based strategies. Academy of Management Perspectives, 24(2), 48-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.24.2.48
Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J., & Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1102-1121. https://doi.org/10.2307/3069391
Rubenstein, A. L., Eberly, M. B., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (2018). Surveying the forest: A meta-analysis, moderator investigation, and future-oriented discussion of the antecedents of voluntary employee turnover. Personnel Psychology, 71(1), 23-65. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12226
What the HLTH 4373 Module 5 instructions ask for
HLTH 4373 Module 5 often brings the course together in a retention plan. Typical prompts ask you to pick an employee group with a turnover problem, analyze who is leaving and why, recommend strategies supported by research, estimate what they cost and explain how you will know whether they worked. Some sections ask you to build on the workforce plan or recruitment plan from earlier modules, and others want a stand-alone proposal to leadership. Expect to use your organization's own data where you can, such as turnover by tenure or exit interview themes, with names and identifying details removed. One or two peer-reviewed retention studies usually satisfy the research requirement, but a named theory gives the plan a structure graders can follow. Check Canvas for page length and whether a budget table is required.
How the HLTH 4373 Module 5 example is put together
This example opens by breaking one turnover rate into tenure and cause, which shows that new graduates in their first two years are the costly losses. It then uses research on retention misconceptions to justify focusing on that group and to test whether pay is really the issue, using the hospital's exit interviews. Job embeddedness supplies the design, with a short account of the theory and its evidence. The strategy is laid out under the three parts of the theory: links through mentors and a cohort, fit through specialty tracks and a clinical career step, and sacrifice through a vesting benefit. An itemized cost section compares the plan's price with the cost of the departures it targets. Seven measures, led by two-year retention with a target, close the paper and the course's workforce thread.
Where the points sit in the HLTH 4373 Module 5 rubric
Graders of retention plans typically look for a diagnosis before a prescription. The analysis criterion rewards turnover data broken down by group, tenure or cause rather than one overall rate. The strategy criterion gives full credit when each intervention answers a documented cause and draws on research or theory, and it marks down generic lists of perks. A feasibility or financial criterion is common in health administration rubrics, so an itemized cost set against the cost of turnover earns points. The evaluation criterion asks for measures with targets and a timeline, and higher scores go to plans that separate preventable from unavoidable departures. Integration with earlier course work, clear organization and correct APA 7 citation make up the remaining marks in most sections.
HLTH 4373 Module 5 help: mistakes that cost points
Retention papers slip when they recommend a raise for everyone without checking whether pay is why people leave. Another weak spot is a single turnover rate that mixes retirements, dismissals and resignations, which hides the group that actually matters. Students often list ten perks with no link to any cause, and graders read that as guessing. Make the theory do real work by organizing the strategy around it, not by citing it once in the introduction. Put a price on the plan and on the turnover it prevents, even if both are estimates. Name one primary measure with a target. If your group is night-shift nurses, medical assistants or another role, share its turnover numbers and your prompt, and we can prepare a Module 5 retention plan for that group.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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HLTH 4373 Module 5 questions, answered
What does HLTH4373 Module 5 usually ask for?
HLTH4373 frequently ends with retention: analyze turnover in one employee group, identify its causes, propose a strategy grounded in research, estimate its cost and set measures that show whether it works. Your classroom's instructions decide the group.
What is job embeddedness?
A theory of why people stay in a job, built on three parts: links to colleagues and the community, fit between the job and the person, and what the person would sacrifice by leaving.
Is pay the main reason health care workers leave?
Often it is not. Retention research and most exit interview data point to workload, schedules, support and career growth as frequent reasons, so check your own organization's data before recommending raises.
Where can I find a free HLTH 4373 Module 5 sample paper?
Right here. The full Module 5 retention strategy for early-career therapists is posted on this page, with the turnover segmentation, the embeddedness design, the first-year cost of about $142,000 and seven measures.
How do you measure a retention strategy?
Pick one primary outcome with a target, such as two-year retention of new hires, and add supporting measures that separate preventable turnover from retirements, track cost and capture how employees feel about staying.