June 7, 2024
Healthcare professionals who are members of the National Union of Public Employees and General Employees (NUPGE) gathered in Saskatoon for a two-day conference to discuss and strategize about challenges in Canada’s health care system. The setting for these conversations was the historic Bessborough Hotel, where negotiations will take place from June 3-5, 2024, to create the country’s public health care system, Medicare.
The conference was held to develop a framework of forward-thinking recommendations to address the health care workforce shortage and present them to federal and provincial health ministers, and, where appropriate, employers, in order to pressure governments and employers to take action to improve the health care system delivered to Canadians.
“Right now, our health system is facing one of the most serious challenges: an unacceptable shortage of health workers, resulting from the lack of a coherent human resources strategy,” said NUPGE President Bart Brandan. “We are witnessing a major crisis, as health workers work every day to overcome serious staffing shortages, a lack of adequate support and resources, and an increase in people with very complex health conditions.”
The pandemic has exacerbated long-standing structural problems in the way Canada manages health care, but unions, workers and advocacy groups have also pointed to the challenges of delivering quality health care in the face of an ageing workforce and the needs of an ageing society.
Healthcare workers take pride in the work they do but the situation makes it extremely challenging to consistently provide high-quality care. They know that the current environment is deeply felt by patients and their families, making a difficult situation even worse.
“To build a resilient, agile and proactive health system, we must address the issues that currently cause health care workers to leave the workplace. We can't ask young recruits to join a toxic and chaotic system and expect them to stay there long term,” Brandon said.
“While it is important to identify obstacles that need to be overcome, our members are using their expertise, knowledge and passion to find positive examples of what will work to reshape the health system for the future. We see this as an opportunity to provide governments and policymakers with a frontline perspective on solutions to existing problems.”
Some of the issues discussed were
Education and training Retention and recruitment strategies Compensation Promoting work-life balance and protecting the mental health of workers
“Health-care professionals are best placed to advise on the direction the public system should take to meet the growing needs of Canadians,” said Brandon. “We want to ensure the system can withstand future pressures, and health-care workers' voices need to be heard by decision-makers. We are calling on health ministers and employers, including at supervisory level, to focus primarily on retaining the existing health-care workforce. While recruitment and training are also important issues, retaining current health-care workers is essential to avoid a never-ending cycle of recruiting and training, and placing new workers into disrupted and untenable workplaces.”
NUPGE has more than 425,000 members, thousands of whom are healthcare professionals, representing more than 200 healthcare professions across states, including respiratory therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, orthoptists, biomedical engineers, radiation therapists and perfusionists.
