New Brunswick’s two health authorities have hundreds of unfilled positions as they grapple with a staffing shortage, which could pose challenges as the province looks to implement its five-year health care plan.
“Any new measures depends on having the right resources and staff in place to be able to do so,” said Dr. Mark MacMillan, the president of the New Brunswick Medical Society.
“So at this time recruitment and retention remains a crucial component moving forward.”
According to numbers from both of the province’s health authorities there are 181 vacant positions for physicians. The numbers are even larger for nurses, with 708 registered nurse positions and 262 licensed practical nurse positions unfilled.
New Brunswick Nurses Union president Paula Doucet said there simply aren’t enough people in the system to keep up with current demand for services, let alone add new ones.
“We are in the eye of the storm and we’re trying to find our way out with the resources that we have,” she said.
“We don’t have enough licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and, for that matter, nurse practitioners in this province to carry out everything in our health care system for every New Brunswicker right now.”
How to recruit and retain staff was not included in the the health plan as one of the five main action areas, but it acknowledges that many of those hinge on adequate staffing levels.
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It says the province will try and tackle the problem by “developing innovative education and clinical training models; shorter training programs combined with experiential learning; and speeding up the recognition of the foreign qualifications of health professionals trained abroad.”
The NB Medical Society has also been brought on as a recruitment partner. Dr. MacMillan says it takes much more than a job posting to attract staff these days.
“We need to promote the province overall,” he said.
“Every province is looking for physicians and we need to make ourselves attractive and standout against that competition by showing how wonderful it is to live in N.B., that we have a very collegial working environment and that it is a great place to live and a great place to raise a family.”
A spokesperson for the department of health said the dedicated physician recruitment position at Horizon had recently been vacated, but that the authority hopes to fill it soon. A roundtable to discuss how recruitment can be streamlined has also been scheduled for Wednesday.
On Wednesday a daylong tabletop workshop is being held to pull all the stakeholders together to better coordinate our efforts. It will include practice facilitators from across the spectrum of the Medical and Nursing communities to finetune our approach to recruitment and improve ensure better alignment,” said Michelle Guenard in an email.
“We need to work together with a targeted plan for those areas of the province most in need. Otherwise, regions could be competing with one another, rather than working together to provide health care services to all New Brunswickers.”
But that does little to address staffing in the short term. To help deal with additional shortages created by the summer vacation season, the government has put out a call for travelling and retired nurses to pick up shifts.
Doucet says even more outside-the-box thinking is needed to alleviate the issue in the short term.
“Do we need to have the conversation, once again, about temporarily amalgamating service so we can at least have some good service being delivered and nurses and other health care providers feel supported with a skeleton crew trying to deliver services in every corner of the province?” she said.
Last spring, Doucet pitched that idea to premier Blaine Higgs, suggesting that the Moncton and Georges L. Dumont hospitals share some services in order to deal with the summer staffing crunch. Higgs told reporters that he was interested in the idea, but it never went another further.
“We need to look at how we are delivering health care services in this province with the amount of human resources now,” she said.
“Here we are three summers post-COVID and we are struggling more than ever to keep our health care system afloat.”
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