Nunavut health ignores resumés from temp nurses, MLA alleges
From nunatsiaqonline.ca
Temporary nurses in Nunavut communities applying for full-time jobs sometimes see their applications ignored for months or longer by the Department of Health, Tununiq MLA Joe Enook alleged Nov. 1 in the Nunavut legislature.
And that’s led some nurses to give up, he said.
Enook, who asked Health Minister George Hickes to explain the situation—because full-time job vacancies for nurses remain critically high throughout the territory.
“It appears there are situations where temporary nursing staff try to apply for full-time positions in communities that they have grown to love, but their applications are ignored and not responded to for months and even years,” Enook said in question period Nov. 1.
Hickes responded by saying the situation “is a very serious one” that he has witnessed personally.
“I know a couple times where I have been travelling with my deputy minister and she has pulled that individual aside and had them send their resumé directly to her to find out how we can speed the process up.”
Nunavut’s Nursing Recruitment and Retention Strategy, developed in 2009, is being revised by the Department of Health to “improve the classifications of the hiring,” Hickes explained.
“We’re also looking at aligning our recruitment strategies,” he said.
“It’s often been said that it’s better to be a casual nurse than an indeterminate nurse and we take those comments very seriously.”
According to territorial health department statistics from March, each Nunavut region is facing serious shortages in available full-time nurses.
The need is most dire in the Kitikmeot region, which currently has a vacancy rate of 87 per cent.
In Qikiqtani region, that rate is 58 per cent, although Iqaluit fares better at 34 per cent.
And the Kivalliq region faces a full-time nurse vacancy rate of 42 per cent.
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