Alberta still lagging in nurse education
Summit on health workforce shows new emphasis on efficiency

Although recently released numbers on nursing show the shortage is still worsening, the Alberta government has not announced significant new efforts to deal with the growing problem.

Several projects under the Health Workforce Action Plan are continuing according to Linda Mattern, the Executive Director at Health and Wellness for Workforce Policy and Planning Branch. Mattern said that expanding health training programs continues to be the largest strategy in the Plan, but it still is only targeting 2,000 RN grads by 2012. That’s the increase Premier Ed Stelmach made as his first promise going in to the provincial election earlier this year.

Mattern also said the Action Plan is funding projects to increase clinical training capacity because “it’s very difficult to free up preceptor time.”

Mattern was speaking at the second “Health Workforce Summit” meeting held in Edmonton June 19. Much of the focus of the summit was NOT on expanding the workforce but on making it more “efficient” and doing more with less, both messages that are not encouraging for nurses. The “new focus” Mattern noted is “optimizing the utilization of Alberta’s health workforce, using technology and “high performing work environments”.

In the same vein, keynote speaker Chip Caldwell promoted manufacturing industry efficiency programs “Lean” and “Six Sigma” partly developed by Toyota. Caldwell was promoting “healthcarizing” these efficiency plans and noted how many millions of dollars were being saved in U.S. hospitals.

Mattern also reported on government support for international recruitment of nurses and health workers, and on their plans to increase the province’s capacity to assess and register “IENs”, that is, internationally educated nurses. The government has also added another $27.5 million toward purchasing lift and transfer devices and Employment and Immigration is launching a “No Unsafe Lifts” campaign. The campaign target is to reduce injuries by 25% and keep as many as 1,000 nurses healthy and on the job each year.


Canadian nurse education
numbers discouraging

Numbers released June 17 by the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing show that RN education is NOT rapidly expanding across the country. Their national survey showed only 9,447 new RNs graduated in 2007, only a small increase from previous years and still below the levels of the 1970s. Even more concerning was the slow growth in enrolment. The report showed 12,877 new nursing students admitted in 2007, an increase from 2006, but below the 2001 level.

“Research suggests that 12,000 graduates per year are needed to address the projected nursing shortage,” concludes the survey. That’s 27% more graduates than Canada had in 2007.


Alberta projections far short of
2,000 new RN grads in 2012

The Stelmach government’s principle election promise on the nursing shortage was to graduate 2,000 new RNs a year by 2012, but UNA has recently obtained Advanced Education documents that project only 1,657 new grads by then. [I'll be one of them!]

The Advanced Education Department supplied a report on RN and LPN enrolment and graduate projections through to 2011-2012 in response to a Freedom of Information request from UNA. The 2007 report showed 1,239 RN grads in 2006, but only 1,367 in 2010 and then a slight rise to 1,657 in 2012. LPN graduate numbers only rise from 635 in 2006 to 781 in 2012.


Nursing programs turn away
hundreds of qualified applicants

A new report from Alberta Advanced Education shows that nursing programs in Alberta had to refuse admission to hundreds of qualified applicants last year. Nursing had by far the largest number of “turn-aways” at 438, accounting had 298 and medicine only 120.

Evidently, there are far more Albertans interested in a nursing career than our nursing programs can handle. UNA’s successful collective bargaining is making nursing a top career choice in the province and greatly helps attract new nurses.

With an aging population and not enough nurses entering the ranks to take care of them all, private and public health-care providers in Canada alike are bracing for a health-care crisis.

Experts say the numbers of elderly people who need help with the daily acts of living most of us take for granted like getting groceries, making meals and keeping healthy are growing and too few nurses are being brought into the fold, especially among young people.

Kaaren Neufeld, president of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), says the numbers tell a worrying story — while the CNA recently succeeded in graduating more than 9,300 new nurses in a single year for the first time in three decades, Neufeld says the country needs closer to 12,000 new nurses each year.

“There is a shortage of health-care practitioners in this country and working with the frail elderly in this country is something there will continue to be a strong need for,” Neufeld said.

As many aging boomers develop increasing nursing needs, Neufeld insists more emphasis on continuing care instead of cures will be needed.

“We have to change the way health care is delivered in this country in order to meet the need of the population we’re anticipating,” Neufeld said.

Lisa Wiseman, president of private firm Eldercare Home Health Inc., which sends experienced registered nurses directly to elderly clients’ own homes, says the lack of nurses is a problem not easily solved in the short term, since field experience is such a key part of successful nursing.

“Even if we graduated all the nurses we needed tomorrow, they still wouldn’t have the experience. We’re definitely heading into a crisis,” Wiseman said.

A big problem has been attracting young female nurses, since traditionally few men choose to enter the field.

Before the women’s liberation movement, most women chose to enter either nursing or teaching as professions.

Now that women are increasingly being accepted in the working world, Wiseman says it’s only natural that many are choosing a wide variety of professions. With the average age of a registered nurse hovering at around 47 years old, it’s also obvious that relatively few young women are choosing to become nurses.

Still, with demand high and supply low, enterprising students who feel a calling to care for others like Jenna Hoyt, 28, are putting two and two together pursuing their dream of nursing. Hoyt recently graduated from the University of Toronto’s Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and says her and her friends were being wooed to nursing positions almost instantly.

“From the moment we started nursing school, hospitals were lined up to recruit new nurses,” Hoyt said.
Hoyt herself is heading to Ethiopia to provide nursing care and do humanitarian relief work and says of her friends who graduated, not one is still left looking for work.

“Anyone who wanted a job has a job. I actually feel a bit guilty leaving Canada because I know there’s a shortage,” she said.

[Article's picture comment:] Demand for nurses, who are already needed desperately in Canada, will increase dramatically in the coming years.