National Nursing Week 2022
How to ensure nurses continue to answer the call?
Nurses play many roles in a patient's health care journey and are vital to Canada's health care system. This year, National Nursing Week takes place from May 9 to 15, during the same week as Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12. This year's theme is #We Answer The Call.
As the professional voice of Canadian nursing, the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) represents registered nurses, nurse practitioners, licensed and registered practical nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, retired nurses, and nursing students across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories.
Sylvain Brousseau is the CNA'S new president. A nurse since 1993, he has a professional background in acute care, community health and infection prevention. Brousseau earned his PHD in nursing sciences from the Université de Montréal. He is the second francophone president (from Québec) in the organization's history and he is currently an associate professor in nursing sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais.
Brousseau discusses the importance of National Nursing Week and giving recognition to our country's nurses, particularly after enduring more than two years of the COVID -19 pandemic. Canadian nurses continue to retire early or leave the profession entirely. Nursing shortages directly impact Canadian patients through delayed medical procedures, surgery backlogs, increased wait times and increased patient travel times to access appropriate care.
“The nursing profession in Canada is facing a health care human resources crisis and there is a lot to do. The pandemic exacerbated existing problems and now we need to stabilize our nursing workforce,” says Brousseau. In fact, more than 60 per cent of health care workers reported severe burnout in 2021, which is double pre-pandemic burnout levels.
Brousseau offers concrete recommendations, developed by the CNA, to help stabilize Canada's health care system. A big priority is putting in place effective retention and recruitment strategies, as well as training opportunities for nurses.
The CNA'S short-term recommendations for the federal government include $300 million over three years to provide health care workers with retention incentives. These include free mental health care, retention bonuses for senior nurses, student loan forgiveness, tax incentives and incentives for those willing to study and practice in hard-to-staff areas.
“An important part of retention is senior nurses, before they retire, mentoring novice nurses during the transition period into professional practice,” says Brousseau.
The CNA is also recommending $300 million in funding over three years to help provinces and territories optimize workloads. This includes better staffing ratios, childcare support and more administrative, clerical and cleaning staff. These support staff will provide more time for nursing care that falls within each nurse's scope of practice.
In ideal conditions, one nurse cares for about five hospital patients. However, in some parts of Canada, one nurse is caring for 10 patients, which is unsafe for patients and makes burnout worse.
Medium and longer-term recommendations include $50 million over four years to establish a national health care workforce body to collect high-quality data to support regional planning. With his academic background, Brousseau believes that collecting “current and consistent” data is essential for successful human resources planning.
Mental health continues to be top-of-mind with the pandemic and health care work environments are very challenging. The CNA recommends creating a national mental health strategy for health care workers, including funding for mental health supports and pan-canadian monitoring of worker wellness.
Brousseau compares nurses to other frontline workers, such as corrections officers and police officers, in terms of the violence they experience at work. Between 2006 and 2015, health care workers experienced more than double the number of incidents that result in violence-related accepted lost-time, when compared to public safety personnel.
Other recommendations include increased training and education for health care workers, as well as funding expansions of nursing schools and professional programs, and more capacity for clinical placements.
With regards to the important role of internationally educated nurses, Brousseau says Canada “needs to give support to both internationally educated nurses and Canadian nurses.”
At the same time, Canada also needs to be mindful of the 2021 WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, in terms of not emptying out another country of health care workers.
Concludes Brousseau, “We must invest in nursing and stabilize the Canadian health care system. We need to provide nurses with healthy and humanistic work environments and all the tools they need to work at their full scope of nursing practice. We must take care of nurses so that nurses can take care of Canadians.”
Find out more at cna-aiic.ca.
We must take care of nurses so that nurses can take care of Canadians
- Sylvain Brousseau, president, Canadian Nursing Association