Health P.E.I. has hired 100s of new nurses this year, but union says it's not enough

Health P.E.I. has hired nearly 300 nurses and hundreds more care support workers since the start of 2023, according to the Department of Health and Wellness.

In a news release Monday, the department said the hirings will help Prince Edward Island address staffing shortages, alleviate workloads experienced by staff, and improve patient care.

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Later in the day, the province said about 100 registered nurses had retired or stopped working on the Island in the past year, compared to the 201 RNs hired in the past 10 months. 

The total number of full-time, part-time, and casual nurses and care support workers hired so far this year is up slightly over last year, by about 75. For context, the health system's latest annual report said 1,862 people were working in such positions in the province. 

The department's news release on Monday said that in the last 10 months, 547 new staff have been hired in permanent, temporary or casual positions, consisting of:

• 9 nurse practitioners.
• 201 registered nurses.
• 72 licensed practical nurses.
• 265 resident care workers, personal care workers and home support workers.

Among all those new hires, 147 are new graduates.

The Department of Health and Wellness credits a new online application process with boosting hiring numbers, and in particular for making it easier to recruit internationally trained nurses.

Since the process was launched in May, it said, 70 people have applied through the online portal, including 45 internationally educated nurses, The agency said all of them are at various stages of the hiring process.

International recruitment missions have also been part of the effort, with 26 nurses offered employment during a mission to Dubai earlier this year, and 31 offered employment during a mission to Singapore last month.

"These individuals are in various stages of immigration and are expected to start arriving in the province early next year," the provincial news release said.

Another mission to Dubai is being planned for early next year.

Barbara Brookins, president of the P.E.I. Nurses' Union, said the number of new hirings doesn't reflect the actual number of nurses working in the field.

"I'm like, well where are they? Because they're not paying dues, so they're not our members, so they're not working in the public sector."

For example, she said none of the nurses recruited from Dubai in the spring have begun working on P.E.I. yet. 

Union membership dipping

Brookins said 1,200 nurses were members of the union in 2022, and that number had dropped to 1,190 last month, a decrease of 10. The number of casual nurses increased from 186 to 231 during the same time, but Brookins points out they have formal commitment to — or from — the employer.

"It's really frustrating when you see the numbers... It may look like there's numbers there, but there's not," she said in an interview Monday with CBC News Compass host Louise Martin.

"So we don't have the increase in bodies yet that we're seeing at the workplace."

Dr. Michael Gardam, the CEO of Health P.E.I., said that within the group represented by Monday's numbers are "some people who we've given offers to, but they're not physically working here yet. So I think this is a really good first step. I think it shows that we're really starting to be aggressive bringing people into the province."

On another issue, Brookins said she is concerned that mechanisms such as housing and daycare are not in place for the nurses being hired from other countries. She said Health P.E.I. doesn't need to travel too far to find nurses.

"We all know there's lots of international workers here on the island, and we have nurses here on the island that are not working."

In an interview Monday afternoon, Health Minister Mark McLane said he doesn't believe the numbers are misleading in terms of net gain. He said Health P.E.I. is always creating new jobs within the system, and many nurses who retire later come back into the workforce as casuals.

We're not doing the same things we've done in the past and expecting different results, so it's very encouraging to see the interest and some of the preliminary results.— Health Minister Mark McLane

He said it's important to keep the public and health-care workers informed on recruitment efforts, and noted that the province has already offered jobs to nursing students at the University of Prince Edward Island who are graduating at Christmas and in the spring.

"We're not doing the same things we've done in the past and expecting different results, so it's very encouraging to see the interest and some of the preliminary results that we have on some of the pathways," McLane said.