More than a quarter of young nurses in Manitoba leave the profession before they turn 35 amid high rates of burnout and discontent with working conditions, a new think-tank report suggests.
While Manitoba had the lowest proportion of young nurses leaving vs. young nurses entering the profession, the number who quit by the age of 35 jumped by 11 per cent over the last decade, the Montreal Economic Institute report said.
“Manitoba is actually the best performing in terms of retention,” said MEI spokeswoman Samantha Dagres. “The caveat is that more nurses left in 2022 than in 2013. The problem is worsening in Manitoba, but it is still above the national proportion.”
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson: “We are seeing nurses leave.”
For every 100 nurses who started working in Manitoba in 2022 — coming out of peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic — 29.4 below the age of 35 left the profession, the study suggested. The national ratio was 40, up by 25 per cent from 2013, said MEI.
Manitoba was followed by B.C. (31.5), Ontario (35.1) and Saskatchewan (35.4). New Brunswick (80.2) and Nova Scotia (60.4) had the highest ratios of Canada’s 10 provinces.
Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said Manitoba’s figure reflects what she is witnessing within the profession.
“We are seeing nurses leave,” said Jackson, who has called on the province to make staff retention the top priority. “It’s a tough profession to work in right now, especially with all the mandated overtime and the expectation of care with heavy patient loads.”
Manitoba’s public health system, like others in Canada, is struggling to retain nurses amid chronic shortages, the report said. Health Canada anticipates a shortage of 117,600 nurses by 2030.
New nurses become overwhelmed after completing an education in which their workloads were “carefully planned,” said Jackson. “All of a sudden, it’s a pushed-off-the-end-of-the-pier type of thing.”
Jackson pointed to a lack of support and mentoring for new nurses. Mentors also have heavy workloads, she said.
“We know new nurses need to be supported and mentored. Otherwise, they don’t stay,” she said.
Mandated overtime was cited as another contributor for nurses leaving the profession or seeking work in the private sector.
“When you’ve already worked a 12-hour shift, and you’re told at the end of it you can’t go home, that’s a big issue,” said Jackson.
She called on the NDP government to follow through on an election promise to change the culture in health care.
“I still have nurses saying to me, ‘When is this going to start?’” said Jackson.
After the NDP government was sworn in nearly a year ago, Premier Wab Kinew tasked Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara with retaining and recruiting staff by changing the culture “so front-line workers know their voices are heard and their work is valued.”
The province also pledged to hire 300 more nurses.
Improved scheduling or flexibility will aid retention efforts, according to the MNU and the think-tank report.
Jackson said the latest contract for MNU members is worded to allow nurses to self-schedule, similar to private-agency staff, but there hasn’t been much uptake from employers.
The report favours the use of private agencies, which is something the MNU does not support.
“Our system has been financially sucked dry by the agencies,” said Jackson.
More than $1.5 billion of taxpayer money is projected to be spent on for-profit agencies in the 2023-24 fiscal year, Jackson and Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, wrote in an opinion column in Monday’s Free Press.
Jackson said the Manitoba government needs to further build its float pool, known as the provincial travel nurse team.
Asagwara said the NDP expanded the float pool to give nurses flexibility and replicate the kind of opportunities normally offered by private agencies.
The minister pointed to “big” wage increases in the latest collective agreement and a partnership with MNU to expand mentorship and peer support programs.
Asagwara said the government “is on the side of nurses,” and there is more work to do.
“As a nurse myself I can tell you a career in nursing is so rewarding and our government welcomes young new nurses with open arms,” Asagwara said in a statement.
“We want working in Manitoba to be the dream job for every nurse and we’ve done a lot of work to put some of the things we’ve heard from new nurses into practice.”
Every nursing graduate gets a letter of congratulations from Asagwara and Kinew, the minister said.
The number of nurses who leave the profession before 35 is a “good proxy” for bureaucratic problems in health care, which are endemic in Canada, said Dagres.
She said MEI and the report are non-partisan and unaffiliated with any organization or group.
MEI’s report cited nursing data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and a recent online survey of almost 5,600 nurses by CFNU.
The survey found about 90 per cent reported some amount of burnout.
Two-thirds of respondents felt their relationships with friends and family were negatively impacted by the number of hours they work.
About 40 per cent said they intend to leave the profession, leave their job or retire within the next year due to factors such as staffing levels, workload and a lack of work-life balance.
Respondents said guaranteed days off, more flexibility in scheduling or lower taxes would encourage them to stay in their role longer.
Nearly half of new grads said they were interested in working for private agencies, with “better pay” being cited as the primary reason.
chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca
Chris Kitching
Reporter
Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.
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