The nursing shortage issue in the Canadian healthcare system has become a crucial concern affecting healthcare delivery, patient welfare, and nurses (Baumann & Crea-Arsenio, 2023). In the last couple of years, Canada has faced an increasing disparity between the demand for nursing services and nursing workforce supply. These inequities have brought about several hurdles that healthcare systems face, resulting in healthcare quality and accessibility issues. The impact of the nursing shortage consists of other issues related to workforce planning, retention strategies, and health system sustainability (Baumann & Crea-Arsenio, 2023). Nurses are not only essential caregivers in the hospital but also patient advocates and an inseparable part of the multidisciplinary teams. Their skill, passion, and competence are equally important to quality patient care. The nursing shortage challenges the professional practice and presents many challenges to healthcare institutions, public officials, and the general public. Addressing this problem demands joint decision-making, innovative thinking, and persistent effort by critical stakeholders in the healthcare landscape. Hence, it becomes essential to understand the multi-dimensional nature of the deficit of nurses in Canada and its consequences on nursing practice and the healthcare system. Understanding the shortage of nurses helps create immediate and long-term solutions in favor of the nursing landscape and the desired outcomes in Canada’s healthcare system.
The nursing shortage in Canada today is a significant issue that profoundly affects the whole healthcare system, patient care, and the nursing profession. According to Nourpanah (2021), there is a need to address the various problems nurses face. Also, there is a need for more nurses in various categories, such as registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse practitioners in Canada. The shortage is much more pronounced in healthcare settings such as remote areas, specialized nursing roles, and long-term care facilities (Russell et al., 2021). The impact of the nursing deficit is diverse, as it affects every aspect of healthcare delivery and patient outcome. Healthcare workers are confronted with staffing shortages, exhausted staff, and reduced levels of quality care. On the other hand, nurses are experiencing immense burnout and dissatisfied with their jobs due to stressful workplaces and insufficient resources (Boamah et al., 2022). Consequently, patients are subject to longer hospital waiting times for the required care, reduced access to care, and adverse healthcare outcomes.
The nursing shortage problem in Canada is obscured by numerous assumptions that have shortages in terms of their applicability. However, these assumptions have continued to define the views of the general public, policymakers, and nurses. The first assumption is the supply and demand mismatch. It states that the shortage of nurses is due to the shortage of nurse graduates entering the profession. This opinion is only partially genuine as it neglects other factors that contribute to the issue of nurse shortage. Factors like the lack of knowledge and ability to retain current nurses, the high rate of the aging workforce, and changing healthcare needs are other essential factors causing the nursing shortage (Baumann & Crea-Arsenia, 2023). The second assumption is based on the role of immigration: The point is that the immigration of internationally educated nurses (IENs) is considered a quick solution to the nursing shortage. This point does not consider the difference in skill and knowledge capacity between the nurses recruited from other countries; hence, it can affect the required healthcare outcomes. The assumption also needs to consider the cultural competency nurses should have when dealing with people from various cultural backgrounds in Canada (Nourpanah, 2021). Lastly, there is the assumption of quality vs. quantity. This assumption lays the ground for the idea that increasing the number of nurses will automatically end the nursing shortage without considering the required standards that ensure desired outcomes in the healthcare system. Nurses enrolled in the various institutions should have complete knowledge and proper utilization of their skills to administer the required care to patients.
Although the nursing shortage problem has been thoroughly studied and investigated, specific topics need to be examined more to develop a holistic and effective action plan. The first area encompasses workforce planning and policy-making. It involves studying the various factors that lead to the complexity of the supply and demand of nurses, prediction of future healthcare needs, and evidence-based decision-making and policies (Baumann & Crea-Arsenia, 2023). The second topic involves retention strategy and the nature of the work environments where their employers expose the nurses. This topic focuses on finding creative solutions for the retention of nurses, including increased job satisfaction and quality of the working environment, so that nurses attain excellence and professional growth. The next topic concerns the competency of education and training nurses receive as professionals. It includes analyzing the effectiveness of nursing education programs and adapting to course and training programs that address the evolving healthcare needs of patients (Russell et al., 2021). Training programs provide platforms for ongoing education, professional growth, and nurse skill development. The final topic is based on diversity, equity, and inclusion. This topic concerns the process of including nurses from various communities in Canada. The topic touches on diversity, equality, and inclusion. These measures eliminate the discrimination of individuals from underrepresented communities in acquiring nursing skills and knowledge. If more individuals from these communities are recruited, they will care for the patients in the underserved or marginalized communities.
Nurses have a profound role in addressing the nursing crisis in Canada. Consequently, their role in addressing the issue affects their daily nurse practice. Nurses have essential roles when caring for the patient’s needs in hospitals. Nurses face negative impacts due to understaffing, more workloads, and intense work environments. These impacts on nurses include nurse burnout, job dissatisfaction, and a high turnover rate (Boamah et al., 2022). These impacts consequently lower the ambitions of nurses to foster care for patients and bring out the expected positive outcomes in the patients’ healthcare conditions. These challenges also contribute to more nurses leaving their jobs, worsening the nurse shortage issue in Canada. Nurses have a huge role in ensuring that their future as healthcare practitioners is secured and that they operate in better work environments (World Health Organization, 2022). Nurses can form groups that have the nurse’s interests at hand. These groups should advocate for suitable measures to deal with the shortage of nurses and advise the various stakeholders on measures that do not contribute to the required solutions. Nurses should also push for programs that increase their competency in knowledge and skills in providing care to handle the massive workload as more nurses get deployed in various healthcare facilities (Boamah et al., 2022). Nurses should formulate policies that touch on their various issues and collectively ensure that the government listens to them to formulate policies that protect the nurse’s interests. These measures improve retention, strengthen nursing training and education, and foster workplace support. Their skills, knowledge, and dedication are instrumental in creating nursing deficiency remedies through policies, procedures, and activities to benefit nursing personnel in Canada.
Addressing the issue of nurse shortage in Canada requires intervention from critical stakeholders in Canada’s healthcare system (Murphy et al., 2022). The first group consists of healthcare organizations. These organizations play a role in formulating and supporting positive working environments for nurses to help in their retention and conducting effective planning to address the shortage of nurses. The government also plays a critical role in ensuring that the issue of nurse shortage is addressed. The government is in charge of formulating policies that favor the working conditions of nurses; they are also in charge of funding training and educational programs for nurses and ensuring that they recruit more nurses who will serve in underserved and rural areas. The third group of stakeholders is the learning institutions. These institutions are in charge of educating nurses and ensuring that they equip them with the right skills and knowledge to manage the various health conditions of Canadian citizens; they are also in charge of enhancing training opportunities for nurses who are already employed to equip them with the latest skills in the nursing landscape (Mohammadnejad et al., 2023). The last group consists of patients in charge of pressing the government to ensure it delivers the best policies that promote the recruitment of more nurses, hence fostering quality healthcare.
The nursing crisis in Canada is familiar, as it has been going on for several decades. Some factors contributing to the crisis include changes in demographics, health system reforms, and world trends that affect the profession of nurses. Previously, financial recessions and reductions in healthcare budgets were the main reasons for nursing shortages due to insufficient resources, limited job openings, and negative influences on the attractiveness of the nursing profession (Baumann & Crea-Arsenio, 2023). There have been attempts to tackle the nursing shortage, including higher nursing education enrollment, international nurses’ recruitment, developing retention strategies, and creating a better work environment and status for nurses (Boamah et al., 2022). Despite such efforts, the nursing shortage still exists, hence the need for concerted efforts, innovation, and collaboration that will result in the development of sustainable solutions and delivery of high-quality nursing services that are responsive to the changing healthcare needs of Canadians.
The shortage of nurses in Canada stems from numerous interconnected and interdependent components. First, demographic factors have become a key contributor to the rising issue of nurse staffing. Canada experiences a high rate of increase in the number of older adults (Béland & Marier, 2020). Due to the increase in demand for better care for these individuals, nurses in Canada are exceptionally busy dealing with and handling the health conditions of these older adults. It makes the nurses draw attention from other patients in critical conditions, thus reducing patient care and resulting in positive healthcare outcomes.
Additionally, the retirement of experienced, knowledgeable nurses increases the problem. These nurses often retire in large numbers, thus reducing the number of nurses available in hospitals and other healthcare facilities (Murphy et al., 2022). Third, staff attrition is a significant contributing factor because nurses experience high levels of burnout, disappointment in job satisfaction, and high turnover rates due to stressful working environments, insufficient staffing levels, and limited training (Boamah et al., 2022). Moreover, in the educational sector, shortcomings such as low enrollment and capacity, the lack of faculty, and clinical training opportunities are detrimental to the pipeline of new nurses, making them go to such professions. Furthermore, many nurses are moving towards other careers, such as advanced practice nurse roles, administrator positions, or other health professions. It results in nurses being pulled away from direct patient care positions. Moreover, global competition for nursing talent, low recruitment of nurses from other countries, immigration laws, and competition with other countries affect the number of nurses in Canada.
The influence of the nursing shortage on health care and patient care delivery is enormous. Staffing deficits, additional workloads, and fatigue reduce the quality and safety of patients’ care, resulting in higher rates of medical errors, adverse events, and patient dissatisfaction (Singh et al., 2024). Decreasing the number of nurses in specific areas, including remote locations, complex units, and primary health care systems, hampers the provision of prompt essential care. For this reason, the nursing shortage results in worse health outcomes, more extended hospital stays higher readmission rates, and, ultimately, higher healthcare costs.
The nursing shortage has significant economic implications which affect the healthcare system. It causes an increased burden on the healthcare system in terms of overtime pay, recruiting, hiring, and retaining new employees and extending the duration of patients’ sick leaves. Absenteeism, turnover, and lower morale among nursing staff will negatively affect productivity, efficiency, and quality of healthcare services (Boamah et al., 2022). Besides, it limits the capacity of the healthcare system to meet the growing demand for health services, which often results in longer wait times, delayed care, and overcrowded health facilities. The nursing shortage can be addressed through recruitment, training, and retention strategies, which do require considerable resources, including advertising, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding, investments in nursing education and training, and implementation and support of retention strategies (salaries and benefits, flexible work arrangements, career advancement opportunities, and supportive work environments).
The nursing shortage issue in Canada is becoming more complex due to critical obstacles hindering the development of relevant strategies. An ultimate problem lies in the multifaceted nature of shortages, demographic shifts, economic constraints, educational limitations, and systemic issues within the healthcare sector. The scarcity of resources affects the budget for facilitating healthcare facilities, inadequate financing for education institutions, and facilitating recruitment, training, and retaining workers (World Health Organization, 2022). Moreover, the current regulations, guidelines, and licensing requirements for nursing in Canada lead to an increase in administrative workload and complexity, which remains a challenge faced by IEN and other qualified nurses in securing a job in Canada (Nourpanah, 2021). The inferior work conditions, characterized by understaffing, overwhelming workload, and insufficient staff development, often lead to nurse burnouts, inadequate job satisfaction, and nurse turnover, worsening the existing nursing shortage.
Moreover, assumptions about nursing as a profession need more information about the shortage crisis to ensure a proper solution. These barriers collectively hinder comprehensive and multifaceted strategies to resolve the nursing shortage. The various stakeholders need to address the issue of nurse staffing by developing solutions that deal with the root problems and the cause of the nurse shortage in Canada while trying to meet the healthcare requirements of Canadians.
A diversified approach through specific initiatives and lobbying is the key to effectively addressing the shortage of nurses. First, increasing nursing educational capacity by adding more students to nursing programs, creating more clinical training opportunities, and tackling faculty supply issues will widen the supply of new nurses to meet the population’s needs (Buchan et al., 2022). This strategy is highlighted by linking educational capacity to recruiting new nursing graduates, relieving a relatively long-term shortage. The second strategy is establishing retention-focused programs, like improving working conditions, providing competitive compensation packages and awards, and offering advancement career paths, which can also reduce nurse attrition and increase employee satisfaction (Boamah et al., 2022). A supportive workplace and competitive compensation rates attract loyal and dedicated employees. The last strategy involves incorporating technology and innovative healthcare delivery models, such as telehealth, nurse-led clinics, and collaborative practice models, as they will help maximize the utilization of the existing nursing workforce and enhance capacity, productivity, and patient accessibility (Mohammadnejad et al., 2023). If applied collaboratively with the involvement of all healthcare organizations, government agencies, educational institutions, and the public, these strategies offer a solution to this problem. They could also improve the quality of nursing care and ensure that the nursing workforce would remain resilient in the face of the changing needs of Canadian healthcare.
Canada’s nursing shortage and workforce planning are significant challenges affecting healthcare delivery, patient care quality, and healthcare system sustainability. The main insights and conclusions demonstrate the intricacy of the problem, which is affected by various determinants, including demographic changes, economic challenges, educational drawbacks, and structural barriers. Tackling this multifaceted issue demands concerted efforts from healthcare providers, governmental entities, academic bodies, and society (Murphy et al., 2022). Hence, the role of collective responsibility is vital. New strategies, which include improving learning capacity and retention rates and using technology and collaborative practice modes, offer practical approaches to dealing with the nursing shortage. Thus, stakeholders, decision-makers, and the nursing profession need a call to action to direct their attention to specific initiatives, policies, and interventions that encourage nurses’ recruitment, training, retention, and professional development. Through collective work and the implementation of innovative strategies, we can shape a nursing workforce that is resistant to failures and strong enough to provide healthcare in Canada that is accessible, high-quality, and patient-centered in the future.
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Béland, D., & Marier, P. (2020). COVID-19 and long-term care policy for older people in Canada. Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 32(4-5), 358-364. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08959420.2020.1764319
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Strategies and Interventions to Address Nursing Shortage
| Strategy/Intervention | Rationale and Evidence | Potential Impact and Benefits |
| Enhancing educational capacity | Direct correlation between educational capacity and number of new nursing graduates. | Increase in new nursing graduates, long-term alleviation of shortage |
| Improving retention-focused initiatives | Supportive work environments and competitive compensation packages influence nurse retention rates. | Reduction in nurse turnover, improvement in job satisfaction |
| Leveraging technology and innovative healthcare delivery models | Optimization of nursing workforce, enhancement of productivity, and improvement in patient access to care. | Improved utilization of existing nursing workforce, enhanced productivity. |