Sask. NDP calls for healthcare overhaul

WATCH: Despite the province’s healthcare recruitment strategy, the NDP says Saskatchewan’s healthcare system continues to fall behind the rest of the country.

A report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows nearly one in four rural and remote nurses in Saskatchewan have left between 2018 and 2023, and the NDP is calling for an overhaul.

“The numbers are shocking,” said opposition health critic Vicki Mowat. “The Sask. Party’s healthcare recruitment plan is failing.”

Mowat says according to the report, there’s been a 24 per cent drop in rural and remote registered nurses, or a loss of 526 from 2018 to 2023.

She says there’s been a loss of 95 registered nurses working in long term care homes across the province, a 10 per cent drop. And she adds Saskatchewan has eight per cent fewer psychiatric nurses, a loss of 63 from 2018 to 2023.

Mowat says the problem extends to physicians too. She says Saskatchewan is well behind the Canadian average for physicians and specialists per 100,000 residents. Saskatchewan is second last with 221 physicians per 100,000, and last in Canada with 103 specialists per 100,000.

“We need to massively overhaul our recruitment strategy and build retention solutions with our health care workers that are currently shouldering the burden of this government’s failures,” she said. “Our health care workers deserve better.”

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses says the main reason people are leaving the rural or remote health system is the lack of supports from more experienced healthcare professionals.

“The fact that young grads come in, or the internationally educated nurses and there’s no one there to support them,” said Tracy Zambory, president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. “The mid to late career nurses haven’t been given what they need to be able to be supported in the workplace. And they’ve left.”

She adds the issues in rural Saskatchewan have a ripple effect in larger centres too.

“When we are so short staffed in our rural and remote communities that it puts even more pressure, as we’ve talked about for a long time on our emergency rooms, particularly in Saskatoon and Regina.”

The province says its health human resources plan is having success in rural Saskatchewan and in cities, and that an important part of the plan is recruitment.

“We have some targeted programs to rural Saskatchewan to entice them to come there,” said Lori Carr, minister of mental health and addictions, seniors and rural and remote health. “Whether that be incentives for them to be able to go, and some of those are starting to work. It does take time.”