Over $900K spent on contract nurses to fill PAPHR temp roles

She said they’ve now started using some of these contracts in places like the Victoria Hospital, explaining the PAPHR used three contract nurses in the emergency room and six on the surgical floor.

“Part of the issue at the Vic(toria) Hospital; why we have to use the contract nurses, is because we don’t have a lot of permanent vacancies. What we have is temp(orary) vacancies, so things like people going on maternity leave or long-term sick leave,” she said, are covered by relief staff.

“When we have all of these short-notice sick calls and other types of vacations and things we don’t have enough relief staff.”

Initiatives in place

Callahan said the contract nurses, many out of northern Manitoba, are not a long-term solution, but an interim solution until the PAPHR is able to build up its relief pool.

“We have project going on right now that is looking at specifically relief positions and try to determine how many relief positions are required,” she said, which should conclude soon. “We’re trying to develop practice to understand the expectations for the relief staff that we are bringing on, so that there’s that ability to have some of that work-life balance.”

The PAPHR is also looking at how to reduce the need for relief staff.

“We’ve got initiatives underway to try to support employees by reducing sick time,” she said.

In addition to prevention, Callahan said they continue their recruitment efforts by attending career fairs.

“We attend all of the education institutions in Saskatchewan, so we make contacts,” she said. “We offer the nursing students bursaries, so they’ll be offered in year two of their nursing program they’ll get some of their bursary money, in year three they’ll get some bursary money and then when they accept a position with us they’ll get the remaining bursary.”

This means the students have to sign a return for service agreement to receive the money. Other bursary programs for nurses include ones for rural long-term care facilities.

Recruiting has been successful, but Callahan reiterated the original problem that there are very few permanent full-time positions available for those grads. She added that it’s also important to ensure each shift has a mix of junior and senior staff members working, which is where contract nurses come in again. By doing so it safeguards there is a mix of skills and experience, she said.

“In a department like emergency you can’t have, you know, six, you know, new grads working on a shift, so you need to have that junior-senior mix. So it’s not that they’re not recruiting, but we have to be careful, especially in acute care facilities, to make sure that we have that appropriate skill mix,” she said.

According to Callahan, there is no specific timeline to reduce contract nurses, but she said as soon as possible.

Despite the thousands of dollars spent on contract nurses, Callahan said it’s still a better option than using current staff.

“The issue with the overtime is through the … collective agreement it’s double time and that’s not even really the biggest issue. The biggest issue is burning people out by having them work so much overtime.”

The contract nurses are hired from a company to specifically go and perform short-term coverage.

sstone@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @sarahstone84

by Sarah Stone

Over $900K spent on contract nurses to fill PAPHR temp roles

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