Union sounds alarm over surge in use of travel nurses

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) is sounding the alarm over the number of travel nurses being utilized in the province.

Those are temporary nurses hired to fill gaps in service, but the increasing number of them with no end in sight is the issue.

Having too many temporary nurses is a flawed system, according to the president of SUN.

“The damage it does to the healthcare system is significant. There’s no stability in a workplace that has to constantly rely on an agency nurse to come in to fill positions,” Tracy Zambory told CTV News.

She calls them agency nurses because they are hired by an independent agency, contracted to fill positions where needed throughout the province.

Zambory says the problem with the temporary travel nurses is multi-layered.

“There’s all the other expenses that these nurses are able to accumulate as they work so it’s costing the health authority an extreme amount of money,” she said.

That amount is projected to be $70 million this year, she says.

Travel nurses are mostly coming from other parts of Canada but some are from the province.

“Because they can work for two weeks and make the same amount of money as if they work full-time. The horrible side to that is that there’s no pensions and benefits,” Zambory said.

The NDP urban and rural health critic Jared Clarke said rural Saskatchewan has lost over 21 per cent of nurses in recent years.

“It’s a crisis in healthcare of the Sask. Party’s making,” Clarke said.

The provincial government said that it is addressing nursing shortages through the Healthcare Human Resources Action Plan.

"Adding more full-time nursing positions, increasing the number of in-province nurse training seats, efforts to better connect with nursing students and recent nursing graduates, hiring more than 560 new graudates from across Canada, recruiting more nurses internationally and reducing barriers for internationally educated nurses to enter the Saskatchewan work force," a Ministry of Health spokesperson told CTV News in an email.

The head of the nursing union wants to to see some of those commitments come more quickly.

When she startede nursing 36 years ago, Zambory recalls there were about 10 travel nurses working in Saskatchewan.

Right now, there are 253.