The purpose of the study was to calculate the costs of nurse turnover by examining a case study from one novice nurse and one experienced nurse. Data were collected from September 5 to 15, 2014 in a medium-sized hospital located in Seoul. The turnover checklist as an instrument for this study was formulated, based on the interview with nurse educators and the estimation of turnover cost suggested by Jones. The instrument included the cost for pre-hire such as advertising or recruiting, vacancy, and hiring and the cost for post-hire such as orientation or training and productivity of novice nurses. The time required and the turnover cost were analyzed using mean and percentage. The results showed that it took 5 months and 15 days for pre- and post-hire of the nurses and the turnover costs were 8,111,163 won consisting of 25.14% of nurses’ average annual income. The costs spent for the experienced nurse were 2.27 times less than the novice nurse. The study findings indicate that nurse turnover costs were underestimated compared to nurses’ average annual income.