The Saskatchewan Government recently announced successful recruitment efforts for nurses from two international recruitment efforts in the Philipines as well as efforts in nursing grads within the province and across the country.
The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) has reacted and says that while all recruitment efforts are great and necessary, people need to remember that international recruitment processes could take up to a year to finalize.
“It’s actually quite a lengthy process for a person to conditionally hired, to find their way all through the education that’s required, the skill building in the Philipines to then find their way into an actual workplace in Saskatchewan,” says Tracy Zambory, President of SUN.
Also, SUN feels that the provincial government should be prioritizing the retention of current Saskatchewan nurses more. Especially since there’s been a continual crisis of nurse shortages across Saskatchewan.
“Many of these people are going to be placed in rural and remote areas. What that means is, someone who is coming from the Philipines or a brand new graduate they’re not going to have that careered nurse there that’s going to help mentor them so they’re successful,” says Zambory.
She adds that because of this, retention needs to be the priority before prioritizing recruitment.
“The fact is that we have a system in collapse here in Saskatchewan. We know that we’re very short of registered nurses across the piece. There’s many vacant lines in every facility, unit, and agency across the province. and if we don’t work on retaining those mid to late career RNs, we’re not going to be successful (with recruitments),” she says.
The SUN has been forming a Nursing Task Force which Zambory says has the support of practically all the nurses in the union.
This task force wants to collaborate with the government on ideas and solutions for retention in the industry with insight from frontline workers.
So far, the Saskatchewan Government has not acknowledged the task force’s collaboration requests.
