NWT to raise agency nursing issue ‘at the national level’

The NWT’s health minister says she will seek advice from counterparts across Canada in a bid to reduce the territory’s need for agency nurses.

Agency nurses work for private companies that send in temporary staff to plug gaps in provincial and territorial healthcare systems.

Those nurses almost always earn significantly more, on an hourly basis, than the full-time workers they’re paid to reinforce. That can be a sore point with people who’ve given years of service to the likes of the NWT’s health authority, only to see agency nurses come in, take home more pay for the time they’re here, then leave.

However, health minister Lesa Semmler says if the choice is between agency nurses or closing down services, she has to choose the agency.

“This is not something we want to do,” she said of recruiting agency workers.

Using the example of Stanton Territorial Hospital’s recent months-long obstetrics unit closure, when expecting families had to be sent south to Alberta for weeks at a time, the minister said she’d rather bring in agency nurses to keep a unit open and “ensure that people are not sitting down in Edmonton incurring costs, away from their family.”

All seven agency nurses currently working in the NWT are assigned to obstetrics, Semmler added.

Regular MLAs questioning the health minister acknowledged seven is a low number, given the hundreds of nurses that work in the territory – but the number used to be zero in the 15 years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This nursing shortage has grown without any solutions. Now, to keep health services available, the government is advertising for temporary private workers to fly in and out at a hefty price to taxpayers,” said Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart.

“These agency nurses are paid far more than local professionals, receiving higher wages as well as lucrative bonuses and per diems. They come with little understanding of our communities and no connection to our residents, in turn stifling the ability to make meaningful connections for northerners with their healthcare providers.

“The more we rely on private agencies, the more we are undermining our own local workforce.”

Young nurses ‘seeing the world’

Testart asked Semmler if she would consider banning the use of agency nurses. Last week, Quebec began moving to end routine use of agency nurses in its healthcare system by 2026.

Semmler said she had discussed the issue with federal health minister Mark Holland when he visited the NWT last week, adding: “This is a discussion I will be raising at the national level.”

“For me to say I’m banning agency nurses and the rest of Canada doesn’t do that? I hear what the member is saying, but the Northwest Territories can’t do it alone,” Semmler continued.

“I’m going to need help from the rest of the territories and provinces to do something like this.”

Meanwhile, the minister – a former nurse – promised her department was working to “try to home-grow the nurses” needed to end reliance on agencies. She also questioned the idea that higher pay and benefits were all that’s needed to attract enough full-time healthcare workers to the North.

“We have a group of individuals that are coming out of nursing school and they’re not settling down, wanting to live in this one certain area,” Semmler said, contrasting recent nursing graduates’ aspirations with her own experience as an NWT nurse who stayed in the territory.

“Some of the nurses I’ve spoken with throughout my career say they’re fine with travel because it gets them around the country and because that’s the nature of the healthcare system right now. They’re able to go and people are paying for them to fly around the country,” she said.

“They’re seeing the world, they’re taking off time when they need to.”

Robert Hawkins, the Yellowknife Centre MLA, didn’t buy that argument.

“You’re paying the agencies too much. It’s that simple,” he said.

“The reality is people leave here because they know they’ll get paid more coming back here.”