A Winnipeg private nursing agency is offering registered nurses up to $100 per hour to work on northern First Nations due to the urgent demand for them.
McCare Global agency is offering a special pay rate of $85 to $100 per hour, depending on experience, until December to attract qualified, Manitoba-based RNs to northern nursing stations, as per an email obtained by the Free Press from the agency to prospective hires.
The agency cites the “high need” for workers at northern sites and says it is willing to pay nurses in advance to complete federally required certification and training.
In the email, agency staff say the special pay rate is only available to Manitoba-based RNs. McCare Global didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Private agency work typically pays more than what nurses earn in the public-sector. Wages vary depending on the agency, but in non-remote areas of Manitoba, agency nurses can make roughly $50 per hour, plus per diem and compensation for travel costs.
Chronic staff shortages at nursing stations run by Indigenous Services Canada led to the federal department upping its recruitment and retention bonuses for nurses in remote and isolated communities starting in 2022 until the end of this fiscal year. Full-time RNs can receive up to $16,500 as a recruitment allowance by the end of their first year, on top of their salary.
Still, First Nations in Manitoba are scrambling for nurses.
Nurses are being shuffled among remote communities to avoid nursing station closures.
Recently, two nurses were transferred out of Pimicikamak Cree Nation (Cross Lake) to fill in at smaller nursing stations that would’ve had to close due to lack of staff, Chief David Monias said Friday.
“How do you argue with that?” the chief said, explaining his community needs a full complement of nurses, but “I also know other First Nations communities are in dire need of nurses.”
Now, his community has four nurses for a population of more than 10,000 residents.
The chief said he’s concerned for them and for the nurses, who are at risk of burnout.
“The nurses are tired,” Monias said, and they can really only respond to emergency health concerns. In the meantime, minor ailments turn major without timely testing and diagnosis, and residents routinely have to be sent to Winnipeg to get the care they don’t have at home.
“It gets even worse during the summer months, because everyone goes on holidays,” Monias said.
He said Indigenous Services Canada needs to do more to recruit nurses, including making sure its required cultural training programs are not a barrier to hiring, and look at expanding the roles of other medical practitioners, such as licensed practical nurses.
A full complement of nurses in Pimicikamak would be 13.5 positions. They’ve never been fully staffed, Monias said. In Manto Sipi Cree Nation (God’s River), a community of about 1,000 930 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, there are two nurses and the ideal full complement of 3.5 positions has never been reached. Dealing with nursing shortages is a constant struggle, God’s River Chief Michael Yellowback said.
“It’s having a profound impact on our community members.”
Residents have died because they haven’t been able to get timely and accurate diagnoses close to home, Yellowback said.
The nursing station routinely has to shut down to allow its two nurses to get time off. When there is a medical emergency that has them working around the clock, the nursing station is forced to close the next day.
Yellowback said he’s met with provincial Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and wants to see First Nations communities benefit from federal-provincial health transfer funding.
“We want to see some of that money filter into our Indigenous communities, because we are Manitobans, too,” he said.
The Free Press requested comment from Indigenous Services Canada and received no response.
Remote nursing stations in Manitoba had a 67 per cent vacancy rate in the past fiscal year, the Canadian Press reported in mid-June based on data tabled in the House of Commons.
On Friday, the federal government announced a preliminary plan to expand student-loan forgiveness to nurses and doctors working in additional remote and rural communities.
katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
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