The effort to assist the integration of health-care workers with credentials from outside Canada into the Yukon system is receiving a financial boost from the federal government.
The Yukon will receive more than $3.6 million from the feds in what is being described as an investment in reducing health care labour gaps through the recognition of foreign health care credentials. Representing the federal government when the funding was announced at Whitehorse General Hospital on Feb. 20 were Yukon MP Brendan Hanley and the federal Minister of Small Business Rechie Valdez.
Those at the announcement heard that the money is being provided with few conditions, giving the Yukon a lot of leeway when it comes to assisting foreign-educated health-care workers with certification to work in the territory.
Valdez brought a personal story to the announcement, telling of how of her mother had to go back to school while raising her family, despite working as a nurse in the Philippines and Africa.
“Choosing the Yukon to build a new life for your family should not come at the cost of being barred from practising in the field of your expertise. There should not be qualified professionals with decades of experience from many different countries forced to be out of their profession, especially when we need more of those professionals, now more than ever,” Valdez said.
The federal minister said the investment in the Yukon comes in light of the government recognizing nationwide staffing challenges in the medical professions. People who received medical education outside Canada need to have those foreign credentials recognized before they can work here; Valdez said that process is often long, complicated and expensive.
Premier Ranj Pillai suggested the government could take steps to offset costs around education and testing as foreign-educated healthcare workers seek Canadian credentials so they can work in the Yukon.
Pillai pointed to the Yukon’s health human resources strategy that was rolled out last year. He said the strategy contains 25 steps the territory plans to take to make the Yukon attractive to health-care professionals. One key action is the establishment of a clear pathway for internationally-educated health-care professionals to join the workforce here in the Yukon.
The premier said potential actions being considered include creating a central hub where newcomer health professionals can receive career navigation, assessment and support services. He said there are also possible partnerships with national assessment services and that the Yukon is looking at a “nursing bridging pilot program.”
“I think in the short term, we’ve got 20 or 30 people right now that we can put into a program to get them on the right track. That’s just in the nursing field alone,” Pillai said.
Yukon Health and Social Services Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee said that recruitment efforts for healthcare will remain important long-term as health-care workers retire and recruitment will have to keep up. Pillai expressed the importance of some of that recruitment coming locally through Yukon high school students choosing to pursue a career in healthcare and choosing to practise in the Yukon once they’re fully trained.
McPhee noted that the Yukon is not facing as severe staffing challenges as other parts of Canada but it faces the pressures of an aging and growing population.
“As we navigate these challenges [we] are focusing not just on filling the immediate gaps, but also on building a truly sustainable and resilient workforce that can meet the evolving needs of Yukoners,” the minister said.
“This means investing in education, training support programs and to nurture the next generation of health-care professionals and empowering them to deliver high quality care.”
At the Feb. 20 announcement, officials said that just how long it will take to get a foreign nurse credentialed will vary on a case-by-case basis.
It remains to be seen how much of the staffing gap might be filled by foreign-educated health-care workers who already live in the Yukon, but are working other jobs. Per information provided by the territory’s department of Health and Social Services, there is a 15 per cent vacancy rate among the community nurses who offer primary care out of rural health centres. There is a six per cent vacancy rate for licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and nursing supervisors who work at long-term care homes in the territory and a five per cent vacancy rate for home-care nurses. Mental wellness and substance-use services is seeing a 38.3 per cent shortfall but the statistics note that this is largely due to newly-funded nursing positions with recruitment underway.
A request for information on vacancies made to the Yukon Hospital Corporation was not returned by press time.
Last summer, the News reported that the territory’s health system is increasingly reliant on nurses from Outside agencies working on temporary contracts. In the 2022/23 fiscal year these agency nurses came at a cost of $1.42 million for the territorial government and the Yukon hospital corporation spent $8.2 million in the same time period.
The past few years have seen periodic closures of rural health centres, deferred surgeries at Whitehorse General Hospital and more recently word that patients at might be treated in “non-traditional spaces” with assistance from paramedics as the hospital faced significant demand.
-With files from Dana Hatherly
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com