Current Nursing Shortage in Alberta
Solved by Magic
April 2011
The current nursing shortage in Alberta has been solved - Really? says who?
The Alberta provincial government has worked some magic to make nursing jobs disappear and is now asserting that there is no nursing shortage at all.
New graduates are reporting that there are no nursing jobs available and many are leaving the province to find employment elsewhere.
Presto-Change-O!
the Nursing Shortage is Solved
So what is the real story? It depends on which stakeholder you listen to.
Governments must balance the budget. So they will do anything that will bring quick results and give the illusion that they solved the nursing shortage by filling all nursing jobs.
Labor unions must work in the interest of members so they will point out that eliminating jobs is not a solution to the nursing shortage.
The regulatory
nursing organization must work in the public interest so anything they have to say must be in the interests of people who live in Alberta.
Finding the real story is a bit more difficult that just going to one source and reading the information on their own website.
A Bit of History
In the 1990's Alberta downsized and many nurses lost jobs. Then over time, more RN jobs were added to the system and by 2004, the current nursing shortage in Alberta was significant enough to bring major stakeholders together to try to assess the need and plan for the future.
Various meetings, forums, and stakeholder groups were formed with significant input and documentation of ideas and strategies to address what the Ministry of Health and Wellness call the 4 pillars of labor resource management in the nursing profession. These include:
- ensuring adequate supply of nurses
- addressing workplace health and quality issues
- examining workload, staff mix, and especially the hours that registered nurses spend in work that is not directly delivering patient care
- building capacity in the health care system for planning for future nursing labour market needs
While all that work has been going on, as recently as 2008 during a provincial election campaign, the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta issued a bulletin to inform voters about the questions they might want to ask candidates about the
current nursing shortage in the province.
In that bulletin CARNA stated there were 1400 vacancies for RN's in the province and this would
grow to over 6000 vacancies by 2016.
In 2009 Dr. Stephen Duckett (President and Chief Executive Office of Alberta Health Services) addressed the Alberta Medical Association and noted that without transformation of some sort in the health care system the
current nursing shortage of approximately 6000 positions would not abate.
There is no source given in the speaker's notes for this figure but perhaps he was listening to the
College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CARNA).
Magically the nursing shortage disappeared around 2010 with government officials announcing that the shortage no longer existed.
Documents published by the United Nurses of Alberta (the
labor union for nurses in that province) suggest that this magic was performed by simply eliminating nursing positions that were vacant and putting a hiring freeze in place.
Presto-ChangeO, one wave of the magic wand and no more nursing shortage!
Apparently CARNA didn't like this magic act either and they issued a news release to refute statements made by the Minister of Health and Wellness when he referred to the current labor situation as a "so called" nursing shortage.
They quote from the body of evidence that shows that reducing RN's in the system or not utilizing them properly actually creates lower quality outcomes for Albertans.
So the loss of nursing jobs that occurred in the 1990's is now repeating itself and nurses graduating within the province are now leaving to find RN jobs elsewhere. It appears that the merry-go-round has gone full circle and the number of nursing jobs in Alberta is low once again.
The situation regarding health care employment in Alberta bears watching because the merry-go-round is still turning!
Since I am getting dizzy from this merry-go-round, here are some documents you might want to read to get a better idea about the current nursing shortage in Alberta and decide for yourself whether it really exists.
Alberta's Nursing Workforce Strategy 2004Fishing for Facts on the Nursing Shortage?
