AHS has said it will hire “virtually all” of Alberta’s nursing grads over the next year. AHS Board chair Ken Hughes made the promise at a special editorial meeting with CBC yesterday.
The CBC report says this should mean AHS will hire something like 1,800 RNs, RPNs and LPNs.
Hughes is clearly making a political promise, a response to the strong public reaction to the stories of student nurses, rushed in to nursing programs in Alberta, only to be graduated and told there are no jobs.
It’s surprising how strongly Albertans reacted to the plight of the nurse grads. Their lack of jobs seems almost more important than the core issue: the lack of nurses. The province’s patients do not have enough nurses to provide their care.
Hospitals are putting patients three-to-a-room, or backed up in beds in hallways and Emergency departments, because of the shortage of nurses. While there is a shortage of actual space and beds, particularly in Calgary, there still are many beds – even whole units – empty, because there are no nurses to staff them. The province needs more nurses to increase the capacity of our health system.
“It’s great news,” says UNA 2nd Vice-President Jane Sustrik, about the hiring news. “We desperately need the nurses. Of course, we should be hiring all our graduates. That’s why we expanded the nursing education programs.”
But she also asks whether the new hires are going into regular full-time jobs, or into temporary or casual jobs.
“We saw this last year, when student nurses were hired as summer replacements, with temporary jobs, not regular positions,” Sustrik says. “New nurses want full-time, regular jobs, and low hour or casual jobs will only keep them in the province for so long. If they do not get full employment here, many of them will be off to other provinces or the U.S.”
New hires may not be enough to replace retiring nurses
Hiring 1,800 nurses is not the big boost to the nursing force it might seem. Alberta’s nursing workforce is aging and many nurses retire every year. Hiring 1,000 RNs may not be enough to replace the nurses who retire in the next year.
AHS also paying nurses to leave: Voluntary Exit
Last year, AHS approached UNA to negotiate a plan to encourage experienced nurses to retire, a voluntary exit strategy. Hundreds of nurses applied and are leaving with the extra incentive of the Voluntary Exit plan.
“AHS went from paying bonuses to recruit nurses, to paying nurses to leave. From turning graduating nurses away to hiring them all. This has all happened in the last year-and-a-half,” Jane Sustrik points out.
“These extremely erratic policy shifts are wasteful in dollar terms and in people terms. We need long-term plans to increase the number of nurses. Alberta’s population is growing. Albertans are getting older. Our health system needs to grow. We need more nurses, it’s that simple,” she says.
|
