Canada's health care system is experiencing staffing shortages
The number of unfilled jobs in the nation's health care system has doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Statistics Canada (StatCan) reports that the number of empty jobs in the country's health care system has more than doubled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, health care workers have been working more overtime and taking more sick leave.
The report, released last week, highlights how health workers are coping with their professional responsibilities through the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the final quarter of last year, 95,800 jobs were available in the health care industry. Two-thirds of the vacancies were for nurses and support workers. That's more than double the 40,100 vacancies in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Health care workers are overworking more. While the average health care worker overworked 7 hours per week in 2019, in 2022, they overworked more than a full day — 8.6 hours per week. Health care workers also took more sick days. Compared to 2019, health care workers missed an additional full workweek due to illness in 2022: 5-6 more sick days were taken by union members, and non-union workers took an average of 5 more sick days than in 2019.
Canadian Nurses Association president Sylvain Brousseau warns the situation will worsen unless action is taken.
"(Nurses) will leave the health-care system and they will work in other areas. And the impact is the risk for the quality and safety for the patients," Sylvain Brousseau shared with Global News.
Stephen Lewis, professor of health care policy at Simon Fraser University, calls the current situation a "perfect storm" for a demotivated and tired workforce. And with trends in the health care system clearly exacerbating each other, staffing shortages could mean incumbent health care workers will have to work even more overtime, which could lead to burnout or health problems. According to Lewis, the staffing situation in Canada's health care system is "bordering on a crisis."
At the same time, there has been an increase in students enrolled in nursing programs in some regions of Canada. That is, the shortage is not because no one wants to work in health care. Lewis suggests that the problem may be the working conditions of the nursing workforce that are forcing workers to leave their jobs. He believes that the solution could be a clear distribution of professional responsibilities: that each health worker does the job he or she is trained to do.
According to a StatCan report, the number of nursing staff absences decreased in 2021. However, this trend did not continue in 2022. Instead, the numbers began to rise again.
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Experts believe that all those factors that negatively affect the number of health workers in the country existed long before 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated them.
C.D. Howe Institute health care policy analyst Rosalie Wyonch says failing to address the current problems will exacerbate staffing shortages, adding to the strain on a health care system that is very important to the entire country.
"We have a growing population, we have an aging population, and demand is growing and currently unmet. We need to find a different way to meet that demand," says Wyonch.
