The nursing shortage across Saskatchewan has left workers feeling burnt out and patients frustrated with the lack of care available to them.
As the provincial government attempts to fill gaps in medical facilities across the province, it comes with a hefty bill.
Tracy Zambory, the president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), said in the first two quarters of 2024 there were roughly 300 vacant medical jobs in the province and the number is growing.
She said in 2023, there were 253 full-time equivalents that needed to be filled.
One of the solutions the province has been trying is to introduce more travel nurses.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) said contract nursing expenses over the 2023-24 fiscal year (April to March) was $89.8M.
Is the plan working? Zambory doesn’t think so.
“Our nurses have said, ‘thank god there’s someone there with a pulse’… well that’s a pretty low bar isn’t it now?”
She said time and effort could better be spent elsewhere.
“It’s not only getting in the way of recruitment efforts, but it’s having a profound, devastating effect on retention,” Zambory said.
“We should be thinking about retention before we’re thinking about recruitment because we’re losing very important people. (We’re losing) the mid- to late-career registered nurses and our young students that graduated. They are coming in there for two years and they’re saying, ‘my god, what am I doing here? I’m not going to stay.’”
Barbara Cape, the SEIU WEST president said the contract travel nurses have helped in rural areas.
“The use of contract nursing has increased in rural communities, in home care services, in hospitals large and small throughout the province
But she said work still needs to be done.
“It’s important for leaders who are making financial decisions and operational decisions to really get to the work floor and talk to the people providing care,” Cape said.
In a statement from the Ministry of Health, they said the SHA makes use of contracted nursing services in situations where there are prolonged vacancies at a facility or program that cannot be filled by current staff.
“This is a last resort short-term measure taken to ensure health care services are not interrupted,” the statement reads. “Without the availability of these contract services, the Saskatchewan healthcare system would experience more and longer service disruptions throughout the province and increased risk of burnout among existing health care staff.”
They went on to say as part of the Health Human Resources Action Plan, reliance on contract staff will gradually decrease as vacancies are filled across the province.
“To support this effort, the 2024-25 budget allocates a total of $33.8 million annually to stabilize staffing in rural and remote areas.”
Zambory suggests creating a mentorship program and ensuring permanent jobs for nursing graduates are available.
She plans to meet with health minister Jeremy Cockrill this month to discuss building a nursing task force.
“Hopefully this nursing task force can help to gel those ideas and start to make them actionable,” Zambory said.