MONTREAL — Efforts are being made in parts of Canada to lure nurses from other provinces, but the president of a national nurses’ association says the raid will solve nothing unless working conditions are improved.

“We know nurses face poor working conditions and this is the main reason many are leaving their jobs,” said Sylvain Brousseau, Chair of the Canadian Nurses Association. “If working conditions and staff retention are not a primary concern, new nurses recruited from other provinces might want to quit their jobs. »

This week, Horizon Health Network, one of two health agencies in New Brunswick, held three-day recruitment events in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Her offer to lure 120 nurses to the province includes the promise of an attractive life by the sea with financial incentives of up to $20,000.

A spokesman for the network noted that recruiting outside of New Brunswick is nothing new and that it is also hiring nurses through partnerships with universities in Maine and India and that measures are in place to retain workers.

The province’s other regional health agency, Vitalité Health Network, has announced that it will be attending several job fairs in Quebec in the coming weeks.

Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that the province would begin automatically recognizing the credentials of health workers registered in other provinces and territories. “A British Columbia doctor or Quebec nurse who wishes to come and work in Ontario should not face bureaucratic obstacles or delays in beginning care,” Premier Ford said during a Jan. 19 news conference.

Newfoundland and Labrador have introduced incentives to attract home health workers with ties to the province, while Quebec has said it will hire staff overseas.

“All provinces of Canada face the same challenge of labor shortages in their healthcare systems,” Quebec Minister of Health and Human Services political entourage Christian Dubé said in a press release. “It is in everyone’s interest to recruit internationally. In the meantime, we continue to work on making our network an employer of choice and improving working conditions. »

Sylvain Brousseau thinks nurses need better pay, more support staff so they can focus on patient care, and responsibility for fewer patients.

“Thirty years ago in surgery I had six patients during the day, seven to eight in the evening and 12 in the evening and now it’s 15 in the day of surgery in some places, or 10. That’s too many,” said Dr. Brousseau. He also wants an end to practices like mandatory overtime (TSO), which remain common in Quebec, and pressure on nurses to work what appears to be optional overtime.

He said the Nurses’ Association was not opposed to nurses traveling to another province to work and the inter-provincial barriers being broken down, but he assured that this would not solve the problems.

“You’re not going to solve the health system crisis we’re going through right now by poaching nurses from one province to another,” he said. “By offering them better working conditions and a better health environment. »

Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, a professor at the University of Ottawa and director of the Canadian Health Workforce Network, said efforts to recruit nurses across provincial lines are a symptom of a larger problem.

While this isn’t the first time Canada’s health systems have looked to other parts of the country for staff, the shortage of nurses and other health workers is worse than before. “I think what’s new is the scale of the problem, and it’s not just a Canadian problem. It’s happening all over the world,” says Ms. Bourgeault.

In her opinion, solving the nursing shortage in Canada must start with retention, as recruitment alone cannot solve it.

Professor Bourgeault also says governments need better data for workforce planning, and that federal agencies like the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada could be used to provide provinces with better tools.

Mandatory nurse-patient ratios would also help retain nurses, but could result in longer wait times in the short term. “I think as a society we need to have a crucial conversation about how we deal with this crisis going forward.”