Undeployed military nurses, doctors and x-ray technologists have been filling some vacancies in Yukon hospitals since May 2024.
That’s according to a one-year update on the Yukon’s health human resources strategy — a plan backed by $2.8 million from the Yukon government to get and keep health-care workers in the territory amid what has been described as a local, national and international staff shortage.
Yukon health leaders argue the territory has taken an “innovative” approach by being the first jurisdiction in Canada to call up the Canadian military to work and train in the health system.
The Yukon government signed a memorandum of understanding with the federal Department of National Defence (DND) that is bringing health workers from the Canadian Forces Health Services to the Yukon. The military health professionals continue to be paid through the DND, per Tiffany Boyd, the Yukon Hospital Corporation’s chief executive officer.
“We recognize that the health human resource challenges we face are not ours alone. To solve it takes all of us, government, health-care providers, education professionals, regulators, unions and associations, working together,” Boyd said.
Two unions — the Yukon Employees’ Union and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada — were initially left off the Yukon’s Health Human Resources Steering Committee, which came up with the plan. In fall 2024, the unions representing some health workers quit the committee, arguing they haven’t been given proper and equal consideration on the committee.
During a press conference on Dec. 11, health leaders highlighted their success at recruiting and retaining nurses under the plan.
Health Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee previously told the News that calling in the military doesn't signal that the Yukon’s health system is in a state of crisis.
McPhee told press conference attendees about a drop in the vacancy rate in the community nursing branch from almost 47 per cent in 2022 to 19 per cent in 2024, with a fully staffed Whitehorse walk-in clinic and no community health centre closures due to staffing shortages in 2024, unlike previous years.
A July 3 Facebook post by the Department of Health and Social Services suggests the Destruction Bay Health Centre closed on July 4 and an Aug. 2 Facebook post notes Pelly Crossing Health Centre closed over one weekend in early August due to lack of staff.
The branch that includes long-term care homes has an average vacancy rate of about four per cent, McPhee said.
The permanent vacancy rate at the hospital corporation fell from more than 20 per cent in 2023 to 8.1 per cent in 2024. The corporation’s turnover rate is less than one per cent, which is below the 2.5-per-cent target for the number of employees who leave the organization.
Health leaders failed to convert the vacancy rates into raw numbers to give Yukoners a better idea of how many nurses are needed across the territory.
A press release draws attention to 24 internationally educated health-care professionals who were already living in the Yukon and are now working as nursing home attendants; 11 new internationally educated nurses who are now working at the Yukon Hospital Corporation; and 153 locums covered to temporarily fill in for physicians.
Work on this plan that will continue into the new year includes building a recruitment website specifically for health and social services, releasing a “what we heard” report from the health workforce survey and looking into the possibility of a family medicine residency program. It also involves developing a medical officer assistant program and a Yukon-based social work degree and a four-year nursing degree at Yukon University.
The plan doesn't talk about health workers’ salaries.
The hospital corporation has been working to ensure that surgical services are “stabilized” because historically that’s one of the toughest places to recruit and retain nurses, per Boyd. For example, Boyd indicated the hospital has been trying to support a better work-life balance and created a “second line” for nursing staff to expand the day and increase access to procedures.
Fewer surgeries will be booked over the two weeks around this upcoming Christmas, although all three operating rooms will remain in operation over the holiday season, Boyd said.
“For the entirety of the year, what we continue to see is that year over year, there are more procedures across every sort of discipline booked and achieved, and that we're maintaining appropriate wait times for all of those services,” she said.
“It's not to suggest that that there's less access. It's just a function of how these procedures are booked.”
An August 2024 letter to the News’ editor from Dr. Alex Kmet, who headed the Yukon Medical Association at the time, notes that while Yukoners languish 16 to 21 months on a wait list for hip and knee replacement surgery, the Canadian Institute for Health Information recommends a benchmark wait time of six months for hip and knee replacement surgery.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
