Current Nursing Shortage and Statistics
Manitoba

The nursing shortage in Manitoba has been recognized since 1999. At that time a special nursing recruitment and retention fund that was established in 1999 to help address the ongoing nursing shortage in that province.

Some of the strategies that have been implemented include:

• increasing access to nursing re-entry programs - the province is seeking to attract nurses who have not renewed their nursing license, back into the workforce. Continuing competency requirements are such that a nurse who has not worked the minimum number of hours in the last 5 years is required to take a re-entry program.


• offering financial incentives for relocation to Manitoba from other provinces in Canada.


• increasing the number of seats in nursing education program. - a future registered nurse must spend 4 years in university before becoming a registered nurse.


• recruiting internationally - this strategy can produce more immediate results. Manitoba actively recruited nurses from the Philippines in 2008. Of the 121 nurses recruited 116 successfully passed the CRNE and obtained a nursing license.
  

So the report shows that while there has been a net gain in number of nurses in the system in Manitoba the nursing shortage there continues and the vacancy rate has actually increased.

Vacancy rate for 2008 is listed at 8.4% whereas 2009 it is 9.9% (this is for all positions include health care aides or HCA)

The Manitoba Nurses Union suggests that at the province's inability to retain it nursing graduates is at root of the current nursing shortage and states that almost 25% of the nurses who graduate in the province leave to fill some of the other vacant nursing jobs in Canada.