VICTORIA – British Columbia will become the first Canadian province to introduce a nurse-patient relationship as part of its plan to improve public health workload standards.

The move is a key part of the tentative deal the province struck with the Nurses Bargaining Association last week.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said on Tuesday that establishing a carer-patient relationship is “the leading international practice” for carer retention and the delivery of quality healthcare.

The government would also work with the British Columbia Nurses Union on a “national and international” recruitment plan, supported by $750 million in new funding, to support higher nurse-to-patient ratios over the next three years .

Prime Minister David Eby said the new model will transform the way people are cared for and allow nurses to do what they do best.

“They want to offer better, more human-centric services, and this tentative agreement does that. It sends a powerful message to caregivers here in British Columbia, across Canada and around the world: We value your work and we value you.”

Nurses Union President Aman Grewal said the change will not only help a strained and understaffed health system retain nurses, but will improve outcomes for patients.

Ms Grewal says it will take “time” to work out exactly what the nurse-to-patient ratio will be in British Columbia’s public care sector, although the goal remains to make nursing an attractive career path again.

“The hope is that our nurses who have left the system – either are part-time employees or have left the system altogether – once they see working conditions improving and that there is a lot of flexibility… they will want to return to a profession that they do.” love and want to be a part of,” Ms Grewal said.

The union’s 48,000 members will begin voting on the new contract on April 20. The deal, signed on March 31, includes “record wages” alongside a groundbreaking commitment to support mandatory care-patient relationships.

Dix called BC’s labor crisis “urgent” and said the province is actively working to recruit and retain workers.

In January, Eby said the province will pay for international nurses, fund former nurses who want to return to work and spend $1.3 million to create a new path for overseas-trained nurses to review applications more quickly .

The preliminary agreement will also include a one-time $100 million “Career Ladder” fund to provide experienced nurses and healthcare workers with the opportunity to advance their public health careers.

Mr Dix said the goal was to create a work-life balance in nursing to “make a career out of it” and “not make a job for a couple of years”.

“Today we have 9,620 patients in our acute care hospitals with a basic capacity of 9,200 beds. There is therefore an urgent need to address human resources in health: for nurses, for health workers, for health scientists, for doctors.”