Nurse retention plan on horizon: health minister By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022

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This article was published 24/10/2022 (792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon has promised the province is working to recruit, attract and retain nurses — and a plan will be unveiled soon to address stress and burnout taking a toll on health-care professionals.

“We will be rolling out, in the next week or so, a very comprehensive plan to address recruitment, training and retention,” Gordon said Tuesday as the provincial government announced a new, $12.5-million simulation training centre for health-care professionals at Red River College Polytechnic to open in 2024.

“Today’s announcement is about training, bringing new individuals into the system, but we need to talk about how we retain the individuals we have working in our health-care system,” Gordon said when asked about the province’s growing reliance on private, for-profit agency nurses and how to prevent more fed-up nurses from leaving the public system.

Manitoba’s health regions, on average, are spending 34 per cent more on private agency nurses per month to fill vacancies compared to one year ago. They’re are on track to surpass the $40.9 million spent last year.

Premier Heather Stefanson, who attended the announcement of the multi-disciplinary training centre at the Notre Dame Avenue campus, was asked what can be done to manage a surge in hospitalizations that risks overwhelming an understaffed system.

The new training centre — and a promise Tuesday of an additional 115 nursing school seats — are part of the Progressive Conservative government’s plan to deal with “significant challenges” all provinces face, Stefanson said.

Dr. Kristjan Thompson, past-president of Doctors Manitoba, said news of the sciences and community services simulation centre is great.

The campus hub is to serve a wide range of health-care programs, including nursing, health-care aide, paramedicine, diagnostic technologist programs, along with community services and a disability-support-worker training program.

Training is important, said Thompson, adding, however, it’s a medium- to long-term solution when action is needed now.

“We do need to focus also on retention, and we need to focus on the root causes of burnout, which we know are workplace issues, systemic issues, and look at improving the institutional barriers that lead to burnout,” said the St. Boniface Hospital emergency room doctor, who has spoken out publicly about system pressure in recent days.

The government is starting to listen to front-line workers, Thompson said.

“Now we just need to translate it into action,” he said.

Retaining workers already in the public system is important, said Stefanson, who lauded Gordon for meeting with front-line nurses to hear their concerns and what will make them want to stay.

“Some of the best ideas come right from the shop floor, from the grassroots,” said the health minister. “Some of it is monetary, some were related to safety issues — for themselves and patients.”

Some ideas were related to making training available at work because many are unavailable for such training evenings or weekends, said Gordon, who is working with a task force in her department and a Shared Health recruitment group on a plan to be unveiled by early November.

“We’ll be looking at incentives that bring our agency nurses back to the public system, that bring our retired nurses back and bring back our nurses that may have resigned,” she said.

If the PC government wants to know how to keep nurses in the public system, it only has to look at what private agencies are offering that’s luring them away, the Manitoba NDP leader said Tuesday.

“Two answers that jump out right away: one is on the pay side, the other is on work-life balance,” Wab Kinew said in a scrum at the legislature.

“Whatever the government can do to offer more flexibility around schedules so nurses don’t have to work mandatory overtime and get a chance to see their families, this would be an important step toward retention. And if you can do something on the compensation side, that would help, too.”

At the news event at the college, Stefanson was asked what her message would be to health-care professionals.

“Their work is invaluable. They’re saving lives each and every day,” said the premier, adding her thanks. “We know it’s challenging.”

— with files from Katie May

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

After 20 years of reporting on the growing diversity of people calling Manitoba home, Carol moved to the legislature bureau in early 2020.

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