Hospitals in Canada go to extremes
Nurses are quitting in droves due to unbearable working conditions.
Statistics Canada has released a report on labour demand in the national health care system, which says there are twice as many vacancies in the health and social care sectors in 2022 as there were two years ago.
The shortage of workforce in these areas has left Canada facing a shrinking nursing workforce. In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, nurses are rapidly leaving the profession: more than 600 current vacancies remain current, and another 900 nurses may retire. Lack of adequate staffing in the field, irregular schedules, and weekend work are leading to a growing number of layoffs.
A survey conducted in March by the provincial government and the nurses' union found that 90% of registered nurses and nurse practitioners experience emotional burnout.
16% of nurses are considering leaving the profession permanently, and half of all registered nurses are considering leaving their position to go to private agencies that allow them to plan their shifts and keep a balance between work and free time.
To cope with the catastrophic shortage of staff, hospitals are taking extreme measures: they invite outside staff from private agencies. This is much more expensive for hospitals, whose budgets are drawn up by the state, than paying their own staff, but there is simply no other way out.
Such a solution is crisis and short-term. The nurses' unions say this is a dangerous precedent that will cost taxpayers a lot of money and, moreover, will not solve the problem at hand. They believe that the government should consider what would happen if nurses began to leave the public sector for the private sector en masse, and they demand decisive action from the federal minister.
