Nova Scotia spending $45M on travel nurses to help in long-term care sector

At the beginning of 2022, Nova Scotia was forced to close hundreds of long-term care beds due to staffing shortages.

Now, the province says only seven beds remain closed.

Over the past year and a half, the province has invested heavily in programs to bring in more CCAs including free tuition and financial support for books. That program has already seen 1,000 students sign up and the province expects to reach 2,000 Continuing Care Assistant (CCA) students over two years.

In the meantime, the province has paid heavily for travel nurses to help stabilize the workforce and fill in gaps.

“It absolutely is an interim measure while we grow the workforce,” said Tracey Barbrick, associate deputy minister for the Department of Seniors and Long-term care.

The department has confirmed that since the fall of 2021, the province has spent $45 million on travel nurses to work as RNs, LPNs and CCAs in long-term care facilities.

“I was shocked that it’s that much,” said Janet Hazelton, president of the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union.

Unions in the province have been vocal against the use of travel nurses in health care. Hazelton has noted the travel nurses make significantly more than nurses in the province which brings down moral when they work side by side.

Hazelton said while she was aware of the use of travel nurses in acute care, she was surprised about how much they’re used in long-term care and said she has some safety concerns.

“In long-term care we have less licensed staff, less RNs and LPNs in the building,” she said.

“If one or two of them in the building are travel nurses they don’t have colleagues to go call upon (to) say, ‘What’s the routine? What should I be doing in that situation?'”

But Barbrick said that all travel nurses are still required to be licensed to practice in Nova Scotia and all the same standards and rules apply, adding that the department did not share concerns about safety.

As for extra pay, Barbrick noted that travel nurses are being used as a temporary stop gap measure.

“Those travel nurses have no pension, no benefits, no job security,” she said,

“They pay for accommodations, so it’s a higher number for sure per hour but there is a lot of additional cost for them and no job security in the process.”

Ultimately, Barbrick says the focus is on getting the province to a standard of care where all long-term care residents receive 4.1 hours of care.

Currently, 48 per cent of long-term care facilities are reaching that goal, and an additional 22 per cent of facilities are on track to meet the goal and have received the funding to hire the staff necessary to reach the target.

“4.1 (hours of care) for Nova Scotia reflects three hours of CCA and 1.1 hour of LPN. We are the only province in the country that has made that commitment,” said Barbrick,

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While unions have been calling for 4.1 hours of care for years, CUPE President Nan McFadgen says the province is still falling short because they had been calling for 4.1 hours of dedicated hands on care from CCAs in addition to 1.3 years of care from nurses.

“We expect to have 4.1 hands on hour of care and that is in fact a 15 year old standard so we’re lobbying for a standard that is 15 years old,” said McFadgen.

Both unions have also been pushing to have the standard hours of care cemented in legislation.

“So future governments won’t be able to play with our numbers like they can now,” said Hazelton.

Barbrick says the minister for seniors and long-term care is intending to introduce legislation that would do that but there is no timeline for when that will happen.

“It would be premature of us to require a nursing home to meet 4.1 hours of care per day when we know they can’t actually do that,” said Barbrick.

“The steps we have taken so far are to build the readiness, grow the workforce, hire the people to fill the positions and when we can achievably have people at 4.1 then you legislate it as a practice from here on out.”