Foreign Nurse

The arrival of 300 Filipino nurses recruited to work in the province’s health-care system will be staggered over the coming months, according to Lynn Digney Davis, the province’s chief nursing officer.

“There are some coming, actually, the middle of this month, some coming in September, October, November, and December,’’ Digney Davis said. “So the majority of them should be here in the province towards the end of December.’’

In March a delegation from Saskatchewan comprising representatives from the government, five health regions, the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) and the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association (SRNA) travelled to the Philippines to recruit nurses to work in Saskatchewan.

About 300 new nurses were hired in March. Another delegation went to the Philippines in May.

However, concerns of a possible strike during the SUN contract talks delayed the arrival of some of those nurses this spring.

The health regions have orientation programs ready for the Filipino nurses when they arrive along with housing arrangements and community support, Digney Davis said.

“Senior, experienced nurses are required to do the orientation. So if there is any potential of a service disruption these nurses may be needed elsewhere or may not be available,’’ Digney Davis said. “So the health regions basically had to postpone the arrival of the newly hired nurses from the Philippines.’’

She also noted one of the federal Citizenship and Immigration Department’s policies is to delay the arrival and the hiring process of foreign-trained nurses in the event of any job action within the health sector that might affect their ability to work.

A spokeswoman for the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region, which recruited 150 Filipino nurses late last year, said the possibility of a nurses’ strike earlier this year did not affect the region’s ability to bring in its foreign-trained nurses.

“We have not had anything affect the number of Filipino nurses that have come in here other than our own planning. We bring in as many nurses as we can orient and absorb in a given month,’’ said RQHR spokeswoman Lori Foster.

About 54 Filipino nurses arrived between February and May, but the region decided not to bring in more international nurses in June because they would be arriving so late their orientation would spill over into July when staff were away on holidays.

“So we didn’t have any nurses come here in June, July and August,’’ Foster said.

“We are currently determining now what we are going to do in September and October because there are 30 Filipino nurses ready to come here. But we also have 34 students graduating here Sept. 26 who we have to have the capacity to orient in October.

“What happens now is all new nurses, whether internationally educated nurses or new graduates, are mentored for the first four months on the job. So we have to make sure we have enough mentors in place for these graduates.’’

Foster said if there are more mentors than nurse graduates then the region will bring in more international nurses.

The SRNA’s job is to ensure the nurses meet the licensure requirements and are successfully integrated into the health-care system, said association registrar Shirley McKay.

Even with the addition of 300 Filipino nurses and the hiring of new nursing graduates, based on SUN’s numbers the province is still looking at a large number of nursing vacancies that need to be filled, according to Digney Davis.

“To address the shortage we need to train more nursing students, recruit, retain and repatriate our nurses,’’ McKay said.(source)