Fewer B.C. nurses leaving the profession: report

It would appear B.C. is bucking the trend when it comes to retaining nurses in the country.

A new report from the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) says that for every 100 registered nurses, under the age of 35, starting in the field this year, a national average of 40 of them left the job.

Renaud Brossard, vice-president of communications atMEI, tells 1130 NewsRadio that’s up from the national average of 36 out of 100 in 2014.

“But as our population ages, as we see a greater demand on health care, this sort of increase in ratio of inflow and outflow means we’re going to have less nurses, less medical professionals available,” said Brossard.

But in B.C., Brossard says an average of only 27 nurses left — the best rate in Canada.

“B.C. shows it can be done,” said Brossard.

“And even though that’s the best stats in the country, it should not be satisfactory. We should get those numbers as close to zero as possible. If we look at the inflow/outflow ratio back in 2014, B.C. was the worst in the country. There were 54 young nurses for every 100 starting in the profession that were leaving the field. But over the last decade, B.C. turned that around and is now the best-performing province in the country.”

Brossard credits retention in B.C. to schedule flexibility — something not offered across some parts of the country.

“When we’re talking about involuntary overtime, one of the things that was done was to introduce shift-sharing pools. Instead of having the hospital managers decide which nurse is going to do overtime, what they did is to ask specific pools of nurses, ‘We have a need for people to fill this slot in overtime, and amongst yourselves figure out who can do that.’ That allowed people to lend a hand to one another. It’s really small things like that, but that has given nurses this ability to work better as part of a system that’s very heavily constrained.”

He adds that the B.C. government has also begun to speed up the accreditation process for foreign-trained nurses.

“B.C. worked on two fronts. One of them is the outflow reduced, so the number of nurses leaving has been dropping, while at the same time, the number of newly trained nurses that are registering in B.C. for the first time has been increasing.”

Despite the good news for B.C., Brossard admits it’s alarming that so many nurses are leaving the field.

“It contributes directly to the health-care crisis,” he adds.

BC Nurses’ Union (BCNU) President Adriane Gear tells 1130 NewsRadio the report is nice to hear.

“We have only started to implement phase 1 of [mandated nurse-to-patient] ratios; however, nurses talk. So, nurses who are considering any province in Canada where they’d like to work, maybe that’s influencing things, and people are coming here.”

But she says readers shouldn’t mistake the statistic for what’s really happening on the frontlines.

“Based on polling of our members in 2024, 22 per cent were still reporting seriously considering making a plan to leave. That’s still quite significant. What we do deal with here is, despite an agreement from government to implement [mandated] ratios, nurses and patients continue to work in and receive care in very poor conditions, where nurses are responsible for maybe it’s supposed to be four patients — but they’re actually responsible for eight or 12. So, untenable workloads.”

She says that results in patient care suffering, which can lead to nurse burnout.

“The level of aggression and violence that my members experience, they believe, has gone up exponentially. WorkSafe BC statistics validates that perspective where we see a 53 per cent increase in workplace injuries that require time loss due to violence. So, working conditions remain poor.”

“The level of aggression and violence that my members experience, they believe, has gone up exponentially.”

She adds there are more than 4,500 job openings in nursing in B.C. that need to be filled.

“Those are positions that have been posted internally within health authorities. They’ve been posted externally. They do not include temporary leaves… those are vacancies they simply can’t fill. So, 4,500 is a lot and I don’t believe it includes the number of nurses that we will need to recruit in order to implement minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in all acute care settings, let alone community and long-term care.”

New contract talks

Meanwhile, the BCNU has begun negotiations for a new collective agreement with the province. Talks began on Tuesday.

The union is calling for changes that include improved working conditions and steps to show nurses their work is valued.

The most recent deal between the province and the union was in effect from April 1, 2022, until March 31, 2025.

—With files from Raynaldo Suarez