Nurses come, nurses go: Union says government's poor retention effort is undermining recruitment

Health Minister Tom Osborne says Newfoundland and Labrador is seeing positive results in its work to recruit nurses, but the provincial nurses' unionsays the latest vacancy numbers show the province still hasa retention problem.

According to Osborne, about 400 nurses have been recruited over the past fiscal year. In October 2022, he said, there were about 760 vacancies, and that number is now closer to 700.

Yvette Coffey, president of the Registered Nurses' Union Newfoundland and Labrador,says that's not good enough.

"It's good that we are recruiting and getting 400 registered nurses into the system," Coffey told CBC News. "But if we've got that many leaving that we only have a net result of 60, then we've got a bigger issue. We have a retention issue here in this province, and that's something we've been saying for a long time."

Osborne doesn't disagree.He said anissue that's affecting every industry in the province is the fact that the largest band of workers the baby boomers is retiring.

"For the past number of years there are shortages in all of these areas, largely in part because of the numbers of individuals retiring and leaving the workforce," Osborne said. "Replacing those health-care professionals or replacing IT individuals or replacing engineers has been just as challenging."

Recruitment takes time

Osborne said the province is using a number of recruitment initiatives that are working and slowly putting a dent in the vacancy rate.

"We've set up a recruitment office at the health authority, a recruitment office in the department. We are starting to get ahead of the curve, even though we still have the baby boomers retiring."

Osborne acknowledges that it's not just retirees. Nurses are leaving to work in the private sector or leaving the province to go work elsewhere. Travel nurses, who make more money than permanent nurses became a "necessary evil" in 2020, Osborne said, as vacancies began to peak.

"I am focused on reducing the number of travel nursesand our reliance on travel nurses as we are able to recruit enough nurses in the system."

WATCH I N.L. has a retention and recruitment problem, nurses' union president says:

N.L. is not only short hundreds of nurses, it cant keep the ones it has: union president

8 months ago

Duration 2:22

Yvette Coffey, president of the Registered Nurses Union of Newfoundland and Labrador, says there are 700 nursing vacancies in the province which means the needle has not moved much since 2022, when there were 760. Thats despite 400 nurses being hired from India, which Coffey says has presented its own set of problems.

Coffey said removing travel nurses from the equation could help to retain nurses who are already in the system.

"The use of public private agency nurses who are making double the salary of our registered nurses and working alongside them, it's very demoralizing for the people who are staying here and have a permanent position," she said.

The province has recruited internationally educated nurses from Indiawho are set to work in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, St. Anthony, and Gander.

Coffey said getting those nurses oriented and on the ground can be a long process.

"It's not that we're recruiting 400 and they're going to hit the ground running. They're not all here. To my knowledge, there's only around 100 internationally educated nurses, and they've been here a while," Coffey said.

"It's one thing to have a registered nurse on paper, it's another to have that registered nurse at the bedside, and we do not have them at the bedside."

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