As summer has come to an end, student nurses have returned back to school. Many nursing students have been assisting in care homes for the summer. Although some student nurses might be able to come back and work over the weekends, this is not always possible.
Nurses are in high demand these days.
Some days, clinics have a nurse shortage and often need last-minute help due to a call-in. Such clinics may only require a nurse to fill-in for the day, and that’s usually not always an easy problem to solve.
Ethically and otherwise, healthcare facilities have to have enough nurse staff on hand, so they can adequately care for the medical needs of all patients without overworking their nurses.
Despite the pandemic pitfalls, long-term care homes (LTC) are still a viable option for many families instead of homecare.
Staffing of healthcare facilities can be challenging in the best of circumstances. Throw in shortages in the workforce and a pandemic to top it off, and you have yourself a very difficult working environment, to say the least. The remote areas of our province are in desperate need for healthcare help from fellow practitioners. Nursing in remote areas is undeniably demanding; however, it also offers great potential for personal and professional growth and a forever-rewarding experience. Access to healthcare is not at all fair or simple for those who reside in the most obscure corners of our province. It is in our hands to ensure adequate and equitable healthcare is available for all Canadians, rather than for just our immediate neighbours. For this to happen, the shortage in healthcare practitioners across the province must first be identified and addressed through strategic staffing models that fails not to protect from the exploitation of our front-line workers. In their desperate need, provinces are finding motivating ways to recruit and preserve the country’s most equipped healthcare personnel, including the use of incentives and staffing agencies, as they continue dealing with the unique situations that remote healthcare brings.