Health P.E.I. has hired nearly 300 nurses and hundreds more care support workers since the start of 2023, the agency said in a news release Monday.
The news release said the hirings will help the province address staffing shortages, alleviate workloads experienced by staff, and improve patient care.
It did not include information on how many nurses have left Health P.E.I. this year, through voluntary resignation or retirement, or how many nurses are typically hired in a year.
In all, Health P.E.I. said there are 547 new staff in permanent, temporary or casual positions.
- 9 nurse practitioners.
- 201 registered nurses.
- 72 licensed practical nurses.
- 265 resident care workers, personal care workers and home support workers.
Among those new hires, 147 are new graduates.
Health P.E.I. credits a new online application process with boosting hiring numbers, and in particular for making it easier to recruit internationally trained nurses.
Since the process was launched in May, Health P.E.I. said, 70 people have applied through the online portal, including 45 internationally educated nurses, The agency said all of them are at various stages of the hiring process.
International recruitment missions have also been part of the effort, with 26 nurses offered employment during a mission to Dubai earlier this year, and 31 offered employment during a mission to Singapore last month.
“These individuals are in various stages of immigration and are expected to start arriving in the province early next year,” the provincial news release said.
Another mission to Dubai is being planned for early next year.
Barbara Brookins, president of the P.E.I. Nurses’ Union, said the number of new hirings doesn’t reflect the actual number of nurses working in the field.
For example, she said none of the nurses recruited from Dubai in the spring have begun working on P.E.I. yet.
Brookins said 1,200 nurses were members of the union in 2022, and that number had dropped to 1,190 last month, a decrease of 10. The number of casual nurses increased from 186 to 231 during the same time, but Brookins points out they have no commitment to the employer.
“It’s really frustrating when you see the numbers… It may look like there’s numbers there, but there’s not,” she said in an interview Monday with CBC News Compass host Louise Martin.
“So we don’t have the increase in bodies yet that we’re seeing at the workplace.”
Brookins said she is also concerned that mechanisms such as housing and daycare are not in place for the nurses being hired from other countries. She said Health P.E.I. doesn’t need to travel too far to find nurses.
“We all know there’s lots of international workers here on the island, and we have nurses here on the island that are not working.”