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Healthcare workers sought in Alberta

David Fuller looks at the steps the Alberta government is taking to plug healthcare worker shortages, which could be good news for you

In December the Alberta government announced that it will be investing more than CDN$5 million a year in order to increase the province's nursing workforce. Although the number of nurses registered in Alberta has increased each year since 2000 – there were 29,997 registered nurses working in the province as of December 2007, compared to 24,364 in 2000 – it is estimated that the province is still in need of an additional 1,400 registered nurses. What's more, provincial government figures reveal that by 2016 Alberta's healthcare system could be in need of up to 6,000 nurses.

Bringing in trained nurses from overseas has been pinpointed by the province's government and health authority, Alberta Health and Wellness, as one of the main ways in which the province can attempt to alleviate some of the present and proposed shortages. Last October Mount Royal College – one of Canada's premier undergraduate institutions – ran a 22-day pilot offshore assessment programme that performed assessments for nurses in the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. This year the province's government will once again be working alongside health employers on international recruitment campaigns.

Around CDN$500,000 has been granted to the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CARNA), which processes the majority of applications from overseas nurses hoping to work in Alberta. In the last six months alone the CARNA has received 1,012 applications from foreign registered nurses – around three times more than the number of applications received in a usual six-month period. Elsewhere, Mount Royal College will receive more than CDN$4 million to expand its assessment programme for internationally trained registered nurses seeking to be licensed in Alberta. The funding will allow Mount Royal College to hire enough staff to increase the number of assessments it completes in an average year from 100 to 600. "We have committed CDN$3.8 million this year to attract foreign nurses and other health professionals to Alberta, but getting them here is only part way to getting them into our workforce," said Iris Evans, Minister of Employment, Immigration and Industry for Alberta. "We depend on CARNA to process licensing applications from internationally educated nurses, so it's critical that we support their efforts to do this as efficiently as possible," she added.

Margaret Hadley, the president of the CARNA, believes that this investment certainly marks a step in the right direction towards relieving the province's nursing deficits. "Alberta's nursing shortage can only be addressed by a collaborative approach involving government, the regional health authorities, Mount Royal College and CARNA," she said. "We appreciate the additional resources provided by the government to address the three-fold increase in applications from internationally-educated nurses in the past six months." Not that the Government of Alberta is only interested in recruiting more nurses from overseas. Alberta Health and Wellness is also covering the costs of former registered nurses taking training to become re-licensed in Alberta, while in December more than 200 people attended two information sessions in Edmonton and Calgary designed to bring more nurses into the healthcare system. "Our investment in a range of initiatives will help us to get more qualified registered nurses working in the province," said Dave Hancock, Minister of Alberta Health and Wellness. "We know this is an untapped group of professionals. With a concentrated and collaborative effort by all our partners in government, the regional health authorities and CARNA, the benefits to the healthcare system will be enormous."

Future planning
Nurses are not the only healthcare workers that Alberta is in desperate need of at this moment in time, though. The most recent data released by the Government of Alberta suggests that the province is currently short of 5,496 healthcare workers, including nurses. Pharmacists, health aides, speech language pathologists, physical therapists, and physicians are other healthcare occupations which are presently deemed to be much in demand in the province. The same government data also anticipates that there could be as many as 16,000 healthcare job shortages in the province come 2016.

Last year a new Health Workforce Action Plan outlined 19 key initiatives towards addressing the shortages issue, and this year CDN$30 million has been pledged towards eight key recommendations. These are:
Developing a rural health workforce strategy: CDN$2 million;
Upgrading the skills of healthcare aides: CDN$3.2 million;
Making practice improvements: CDN$3 million;
Providing professional development bursaries: CDN$2.5 million;
Expanding health training programmes: CDN$5.2 million;
Investing in clinical training capacity: CDN$5 million;
Attracting health professionals working abroad to Alberta: CDN$3.8 million; and
Creating a health career and skills assessment network: CDN$5.3 million.

An additional CDN$27.5 million was also committed from the Government of Alberta 2006–07 surplus to a ninth recommendation, reducing and avoiding injury, for the purchasing of lift systems in the acute and home care settings. On attracting more health professionals, the plan proposes that Alberta Health and Wellness partners with the province's Employment, Immigration and Industry ministry to work together on international marketing and recruitment campaigns. The Provincial Nomination Programme is viewed as the ideal scheme with which to attract more healthcare workers, especially as the programme has expanded in the past year or so to not only allow more nominees to be nominated each year, but also allow a greater selection of the types of workers who can be sponsored.

It is hoped that the CDN$3.8 million investment into attracting overseas health professionals will lead to an additional 500 healthcare workers moving to the province over the next three years. Plans are also under evaluation to expedite processing for temporary foreign health professionals. The plans presently being discussed include:
n Establishing a Canada-Alberta working group to review and change processes where possible (for example, the regional occupation lists which allow positions included on them to forego the usual advertising requirements needed under the Foreign Worker Programme);
Delivering regional 'how to hire overseas worker' seminars to industry-specific groups in six cities;
Developing a brochure for health employers in conjunction with the federal government to explain the process for bringing in foreign workers; and
Establishing an Alberta 'Temporary Foreign Worker Hotline' to respond to inquiries from healthcare employers and foreign nationals.
"Alleviating labour shortages, especially those in the health sector, is a priority for this government," states Evans. "Repatriating and recruiting health professionals, coupled with other work under the government's Building and Educating Tomorrow's Workforce strategy, will ensure Albertans have access to high quality healthcare and healthcare providers."

Work benefits
It would seem that Brits who have already made the move from the British healthcare system into that of Alberta's certainly don't regret their decision to do so. "I do a lot more hands on work here," says Doctor Joy McLean, who spent 25 years working as a GP in the UK, before emigrating to Canada and starting work as a GP at a surgery in Banff. "I'm once again removing stitches and giving injections and I love being able to do antenatal, postnatal and baby care again. "People are helpful and pleasant and, although I've been really busy, my stress levels are much lower than they were in the UK. "Another bonus is that I can choose to do as many hours as I wish, as I'm paid per consultation."

Joy is not alone in preferring her way of working in Alberta to in the UK. "There's lots of scope for autonomy and determining your own practice pattern out here," says Edmonton-based Doctor Peter Senior, who also believes that doctors in Alberta benefit from ample resources, easier access to investigations and specialists, whilst enjoying "a higher status in the community," than they do in the UK. Doctor David Hanton, who practices at a small community hospital in a town called Castor, is another British immigrant who clearly feels that working in Alberta holds many professional advantages. As well as noting that there is much less regulatory interference and better remuneration, he also claims to be able to use his skills on a more regular basis, instead of having a limited managerial role like he did in the NHS. "If you're interested in spreading your work horizons (and escaping the limits the NHS imposes on GPs), improving your remuneration for work and greatly improving your standard of living, then you should consider Alberta," he says.

In Calgary, Doctor Keith Wycliffe-Jones has also found that he now has more time to concentrate on the more academic side of his job. Having worked as a Senior GP and Clinical Senior Lecturer with the University of Aberdeen and Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Keith says that Alberta "has offered better professional flexibility with opportunities and freedom to balance my clinical and academic work." He also says that he enjoys the advantages of working in an academic post in the Department of Family Medicine in Calgary and a reduced clinical workload compared with that which he encountered in Scotland, giving him more time for his academic work which, he says, "I had struggled to include with my full time GP position in the UK. "The two academic departments in Alberta are small compared with some other Canadian and UK centres and this appeals to me… it's easy to get to know people and to generate collaborations and friendships."

So whether you are a nurse, a pharmacist, a GP or a physical therapist Alberta is just one Canadian province that is likely to welcome your skills. And if the experiences of the doctors mention above are anything to go by, you'll quite welcome Alberta, too.

For more information visit Health Alberta.

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14 May 2008

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