A local health care professional likes at least one part of the Ontario government’s recently announced plan to address health care system woes in the province.
To address a chronic nursing shortage - which has been blamed for closures of emergency departments at hospitals across Ontario, in some cases for days at a time - Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones, on Aug. 18, announced the province will temporarily cover exam, application and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses.
Jones said she wants the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and the College of Nurses of Ontario to speed up the applications of internationally trained doctors and nurses still waiting to be accredited and licensed in Ontario.
“It’s good news because we do want to have fully qualified nurses working and we do need to make sure that folks that are coming here to work as nurses are able to become registered with the College of Nurses. This makes the process smoother for these folks and getting them working and active and supporting our health care system,” said Marilyn King, Sault College dean of health and community services, speaking to SooToday.
“It’s an avenue to support internationally educated nurses to become registered here and it will bolster the numbers of nurses that we have available to work.”
If the College of Nurses of Ontario speeds up the process, it means that international trained nurses waiting to get into the workforce can work as nurses in Ontario while they are still going through the registration process.
“They still have to complete the registration process to pass the registration exam. Before, they had only one opportunity, but now they would have a couple of opportunities to pass the registration exam in Ontario” King said.
King said that as of last week there are 5,970 active international applicants living in Ontario waiting to be registered as nurses.
Many internationally trained nurses waiting to get in the door at health care facilities in the Sault are from India and The Philippines, King said.
“We welcome government action on health system stability and recovery and we look forward to continuing to work with the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health North on what this plan will mean for Sault Area Hospital and our patients,” wrote Rose Calibani, SAH communications and public affairs officer in an email to SooToday Friday.
Calibani wrote that SAH has 74 permanent and temporary open nursing positions available throughout the hospital.
“We work collaboratively with Sault College to both train and recruit nursing professionals. Other recruitment strategies include attending recruitment fairs locally and outside of our community, working with our community partners, working collaboratively with other educational institutions, and participating in Ministry programs that support recruitment and retention. External recruitment is an ongoing challenge as there is a limited pool of nurses,” Calibani wrote.
Other parts of the Ontario government’s health care plan include funding more private clinic surgeries to ease a provincial surgery backlog and to send patients to temporary LTCs to ease health-care pressures.
Those parts of the plan have drawn no shortage of opposing words from critics of the government.
“We continue to provide urgent and cancer surgeries. Our current backlog is due to many factors including patients delaying care due to the pandemic, anesthetist shortages across the province, and nursing shortages. Surgical activity continues to be reviewed based on organizational activity and patient needs,” Calibani wrote on behalf of SAH.
In addition, as of Friday, Calibani wrote that SAH had 10 patients who require a nursing home bed.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that across Ontario some nurses - stating they are overworked and underpaid as Ontario’s Bill 124 limits them to pay increases of one per cent per year - are leaving the nursing profession.
Some Sault Ontario nurses have opted to work in Sault Michigan for various reasons over the years.
“We currently have 21 Canadian RN’s working for us and residing in Canada,” wrote Susan Sliger, MyMichigan Medical Center Sault senior director of human resources in an email received Aug. 16.
“These individuals are working in different types of nursing positions, at the bedside, as a leader or hospital supervisor. They are also in various FTE type positions, from contingent to full-time. We actually lost some of our contingent Canadian nurses during COVID due to the border restrictions.”
"We have not changed our recruiting practice since COVID. We occasionally have some (Canadians) apply and do hire them, but we are not actively recruiting. The challenge to recruit them is the licensure, visa screen and hiring requirements with the border. It can take up to six months if they do not have a Michigan license,” Sliger wrote.