gical nurses, delivery room nurses? Those in the emergency room? These were some of the questions we asked ourselves about a year ago when we were faced with some perplexing problems of nurse turnover and staffing. Like most hospitals, we were paying staff nurses the same basic salary range regardless of assignment, on the assumption that the jobs were basically similar in skills and responsibilities. But in a 12month period, our turnover in hospital inpatient nursing was 72 percent compared to 35.9 percent in the clinic and 17.3 percent in the operating room. Also, we were swamped with requests for transfer to the clinic.