Where are Ukrainian nurses and doctors needed most?
Two provinces no longer hope to fill vacancies with local professionals.
The Secretary of Health of the Northwest Territories appeared before the local legislature to declare that hiring Ukrainian specialists was the only way to avoid staff shortages. The situation is so critical that last year the largest city in the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, had to cut the number of ICU beds in half, and women in labor were sent to another province from December to February.
In Nova Scotia, there were 1,383 nursing vacancies at the end of March. In all, the province needs about 2,500 health care workers. A program has been launched to encourage doctors who agree to work outside the province's main city of Halifax, and salaries for long-term care assistants have been raised substantially, but staffing is still in short supply. Before the pandemic, doctors and nurses from Britain were invited to Nova Scotia; this year, provincial representatives also traveled to other countries to find workers.
Nova Scotia is in the process of revising its system for assessing the qualifications of foreign doctors and nurses. The Canadian Council of Nurse Practitioners, which recently received a grant from the federal government to implement a project called "Language Proficiency Requirements for Safe Nurse Practice in Canada", is doing the same.
The full article is only available to members of the Immigrant.Today community. Log in to your account to read it for free.
