Whats Up Magazine Huntsville Lake of Bays - What's Up Muskoka

Muskoka’s nursing shortage
Nurses Dorothea Tait and Jan Venturelli monitor some equipment in the obstetrics department at the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital Site.
By Sandy Lockhart
Muskoka has a shortage of nurses and it’s only going to get worse
in the next five to 10 years.
“There is absolutely a need in the community,” says Jean
Broere, project manager of Muskoka Cares. According to statistics
compiled by Muskoka Cares, a collective with interest in
health care, there is a vacancy rate of 15 per cent for Registered
Practical Nurses (RPN) and seven per cent for Registered Nurses
(RN) in Muskoka.
The overall vacancy for health service
professionals in Muskoka, according to
the survey was six per cent.
“That is probably average for the
province,” says Broere, but Muskoka’s
nursing vacancies were high.
To help deal with this shortage, the
Muskoka Cares project applied in
December for $500,000 in funding for a
three-year project to implement several
strategies to recruit and retain health care
staff.
“We need to start working now so we
can fix the problem for the future,” she
says, explaining that some strategies can
be done without funding.
In 2009, Muskoka Cares surveyed 23
health care organizations to gather the
vacancy rate and other information to
help Muskoka recruit and retain health
care staff.
“We did not include physicians and
family health teams as we already know
there is a shortage of physicians,” Broere
says. “We needed to know exactly what
was needed.”
Broere believes recruiting more health
care staff would improve the quality of
health care.
“If we have enough health care staff to
fill all positions, the workload goes down,
absenteeism improves and people are able
to spend more time with the patients,”
she says. “Now when there is a shortage
of staff, they are tired and need a break.”
Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare has
17 vacant nursing positions in the hospitals
as of January 2010. Robert Hughes,
acting chief human resources officer for
the hospitals, breaks it down into four
full-time, seven part-time, two temporary
full-time, two part-time and two
casual positions.
Hughes says nurses working in parttime
positions have scheduled part-time
hours but can pick up extra shifts and
calls to work full-time hours.
With the hospital’s debt recovery plan,
some layoffs are planned.
“We hope we are able to mitigate job
loss through our vacancies,” says Hughes,
explaining if nursing positions are cut,
those nurses could move into current
vacancies. “I don’t think we will ever eat
up all our vacancies.”
Bev McFarlane, chief nursing officer
for Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare, says
if the hospital nurses didn’t have to work
so many overtime hours, there would be
less burnout.
“A lot of our nurses really have an obligation
to patients and say yes when they
would rather not,” she says of them being
called in to work overtime. McFarlane
would like overtime to be the exception,
not the rule. Filling these vacant positions
would also save the hospitals
money, as it would have to pay less overtime.
She says attracting nurses is about
recruitment and retention.
“We don’t want them all to retire at
55,” says McFarlane. “We want their
expertise and knowledge. How do you
structure it so they are able to work past
their first retirement opportunity?”
Muskoka Cares is the result of eight
organizations with interest in the health
care field in Muskoka. When recognizing
the shortage of healthcare staff, they
joined together and applied for funding
for a one-year pilot project to look at
Muskoka’s situation. The Muskoka Cares
Steering Committee is made up of representatives
from Georgian College’s
Muskoka Campus, Muskoka Algonquin
Healthcare Corporation, North Simcoe
Muskoka Local Health Integration Network,
North Simcoe Muskoka Workforce
Labour Board, Northern Ontario
School of Medicine, Nipissing University’s
Muskoka Campus, Ontario Ministry
of Training, Colleges and Universities
and the District of Municipality of
Muskoka.
Muskoka’s 23 healthcare organizations
employ 1,326 healthcare employees with
about one third employed in acute care,
one third in nursing homes and one third
in community care and retirement
homes. According to research findings,
half of the positions were assisting positions
(personal support workers, guest
attendants, unregulated care providers).
The other half were RNs (27 per cent),
RPNs (13 per cent), allied professionals
(10 per cent) and nurse practitioners
(two per cent).
Broere says they found that only 43
per cent of the positions were full time,
40 were part time and 17 per cent were
temporary casual. Fifteen per cent of the
employees held two or more healthcare
jobs.
While the whole province of Ontario
and even all of Canada is facing a
growing undersupply of healthcare
employees, Muskoka will face the prob-
www.whatsupmuskoka.com February 2010 5
Photograph: Don MacTavish