Today’s Nurse: What contemporary Canadian nurses need to stay in the workforce for the longevity of their career outlines the importance of protecting, engaging and respecting the current and future nursing workforce to improve retention and make nursing in Canada sustainable for the future. The report was authored by Dr. Kim McMillan, RN, PhD, CHPCN(C), an Associate Professor of Nursing at the University of Ottawa.
The report’s recommendations are the following.
Protect nurses
- Federal, provincial and territorial governments must mandate minimum nurse-patient ratios to protect care quality and reduce burnout.
- Provincial and territorial governments should establish jurisdictional legislation to mandate employer accountability for workplace safety, strengthen accountability and enforcement.
- Employers should implement mandatory standardized employer-delivered training for all security personnel.
- Employers must fund uncapped trauma-informed mental health supports for nurses.
- Federal, provincial and territorial governments must strengthen staffing accountability mechanisms to protect nurses’ licensure and patient safety.
- Employers and accreditation bodies should embed moral safety as a measurable outcome in health system evaluation.
- Employers should build nurse leadership capacity and reform frontline management structures.
Engage nurses
- Employers, unions, and federal, provincial and territorial governments must embed frontline nurses in organizational and system-level decision-making.
- Employers and unions must reform scheduling practices to include nurse-led flexible models that meet patient needs and adhere to collective agreements.
- Employers and unions must establish formal protected mentorship and preceptorship roles within nursing full-time equivalents (FTEs).
- Provincial governments should establish, where they do not already exist, provincial chief nursing officers (CNOs) with decision-making authority. All federal, provincial and territorial CNOs should be provided with sufficient staff and resources to fulfill their mandate.
Respect nurses
- Employers and unions must establish paid protected time for professional development, and fund and formalize career progression.
- Employers should introduce relief lines to ensure equitable vacation access through robust staffing planning throughout the year.
- Employers should provide sufficient nursing support staff around the clock every day to remove non-nursing duties from nursing workloads.
- Employers must respect and protect work-life boundaries.
- Employers and federal, provincial and territorial governments should develop a comprehensive retention strategy centered on structural reform, not short-term incentives.
- Employers should increase baseline salaries and enhance benefit packages.
