“There’s still, you know, an incredible need for nurses here, and if you look at the demographics it’s only going to get worse.”
— Andrew Furey, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier
Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey is looking to India — and its registered nurses — to help rescue the province from its health-care crisis. The government is setting up a recruitment office in the city of Bengaluru, to try and bring internationally trained, registered nurses to Newfoundland and Labrador.
“There’s still, you know, an incredible need for nurses here, and if you look at the demographics it’s only going to get worse,” said Furey at a news conference on November 3.
Newfoundland and Labrador is dealing with a major shortage of health-care workers and a system stretched to the limit. Nurses are struggling with burnout, as more than 600 jobs are yet to be filled. Overtime has been mandated in hospitals and care centres, and emergency rooms are crowded to the point of overcapacity. The nurses’ union said 40 per cent of its members — facing 24-hour shifts and high rates of workplace injury and violence — say they’ll leave the profession if conditions don’t improve.
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The government is sending a team to southern India this month, and will include representatives from the province’s College of Registered Nurses, who will oversee the licensing of the Indian nurses
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Furey said they chose the area because the state — Karnataka — has more than 100 nursing schools with training similar to Newfoundland and Labrador’s
Emergency rooms in some rural areas have been consistently moved to virtual care or temporarily closed — in some cases for months at a time, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association estimates nearly one in four people in the province don’t have a family doctor. “We recognize that there’s a work-life balance issue ongoing now with nurses,” said Furey. “Part of the solution to that is providing more of them.”
The government is sending a team to southern India this month, and will include representatives from the province’s College of Registered Nurses, who will oversee the licensing of the Indian nurses.
Furey said they chose the area because the state — Karnataka — has more than 100 nursing schools with training similar to Newfoundland and Labrador’s.
The team will meet with officials from those schools and start pitching the province as an immigration destination.
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