The B.C. government is trying to plug some leaks in the health care workforce.
Health Minister Adrian Dix and Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation, have announced funding to create 602 new nursing seats at post-secondary institutions across the province.
The expansion will create 362 new registered nurse seats, 40 for psychiatrist nurses, 20 for nurse practitioners and 100 seats for licensed practical nurses.
The funding includes $5 million to expand spaces for the 2021-22 school year, $8.7 million to support health educational training programs, including the expansion of speciality nursing and the launch of a new nursing program in the northeast, and $475,000 to support graduate nurse education at UBC, UVic and UNBC.
“We know that the skills needed, the qualified nurses has never been greater. Over the next decade 143,000 job openings are projected in health care and social service sectors,” said Kahlon.
The extra student openings will be phased in over two to three years at 17 post-secondary institutions including Okanagan College, which is adding 48 spaces for health care aides to upgrade to LPNs. The Nicola Valley Institute of Technology will offer 18 more HCA to LPN laddering opportunities.
Thompson Rivers University is set to expand training for nurse practitioners by 15 spaces and UBC Okanagan is expanding its registered nursing program by 15.
The announcement comes at a time when the workload of nurses is increasing significantly, and many are leaving the profession because they’re burned out after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we’re asking nurses to do, their role in the system continues to rise. We doubled the number of nurse practitioners spaces, for example, and very significantly increased the number of nurse practitioners, and in spite of that there are very significant challenges in the system,” said Dix
“When you’re at a base in the public institutions of 2,000 seats, an increase of 600 really is exceptional.”
Aman Grewal, President of the BC Nurses Union, calls it the first step in investing in the staffing crisis. She said nursing staffing levels were already critical before the pandemic but a survey found 51 per cent of BCNU members in intensive care units and emergency rooms said the experience of the pandemic had made them more than likely to leave nursing in the next two years.
“We will be working with Minister Dix and Minister Kahlon to make sure that we’re going to be receiving more seats into the future because that is one of the items that will help to address the staffing crisis," Grewal said.
‘Another [step] will be the retention and then, as Minister Dix also mentioned, the internationally educated nurses who are here right now in B.C. and how we can make that transition for them to be integrated into the working force."
