Kinew pledges stricter rules for agency nurses

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This article was published 17/05/2024 (891 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Wab Kinew took aim at nursing during his state of the province address in Brandon on Friday, pledging to improve working conditions for public nurses while promising to put stricter standards on verifying the skills of private nurses.

The premier opened with some remarks about the reopening of the emergency department at the Carberry Health Centre before segueing into a discussion of how his government needs to make conditions better for health workers, especially nurses.

“Nurses have been very clear about what some of their frustrations are on the front lines,” Kinew said, listing issues like mandatory overtime, inflexible scheduling, nurse-to-patient ratios, working conditions, violence in the workplace and dealing with the impacts of addictions and mental-health crises.

Because of those conditions and inflation, Kinew said it has led to a lot of nurses from the public health-care system moving to private nursing agencies.

While he said those nurses are making that decision on what’s best for their families, it means that Manitoba is paying more than ever to staff health facilities, including $56 million across the province and $21 million in Prairie Mountain Health last year.

Figures released in April by Shared Health stated that those totals represented spending on agency nurses for just the first three quarters of the 2023-24 fiscal year.

Kinew said that while Manitoba has 75 nursing agencies, British Columbia — with four times the population — only has 19.

He said his government has heard concerns about agency nursing not just around staffing, but safety as well, relaying an anecdote about an agency nurse sleeping in their car between shifts at different facilities.

While he said the government can’t implement any mandates due to the necessity of agency nurses, what Manitoba needs to do is incentivize nurses to draw them back from the private sector and make the public sector a better place to work.

“We’re putting out a request for proposals for nursing agencies to be validated by the provincial government to work with the service delivery organizations in our province,” Kinew said.

“What that is going to do is allow greater oversight and what it means for you as a patient means quality. We’ll be able to ensure that there are standards in place, that there are health and safety regulations being put into place.”

At last week’s Manitoba Federation of Labour convention in Brandon, delegates voted in favour of a motion calling for the MFL and the Manitoba Nurses Union to collaboratively lobby the province to regulate agency nursing.

At a scrum with reporters after his speech, Kinew said this work has been going on since before that motion was passed, but he hoped it would address those groups’ concerns.

Speaking in greater detail about the validation, Kinew said it would help make sure that agency nurses have the right specialization for the facilities they’re assigned to.

Asked if his government’s efforts would include other private workers in public health care, he said they’re just focused on nurses right now.

By email, Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson expressed support for Kinew’s announcement.

“Our MNU nurses must be vetted and validated to ensure that they are in compliance with the provincial and regulatory standards,” Jackson said.

“To hold private for-profit agency companies to the same standard as those employed in our universal public health system, in order to provide patient care to expected standard, is not only reasonable, but necessary,” she said, adding that she was “pleased to see the new government acting to address the advantages previously afforded to private agency companies operating at a profit and receiving significant funds from the public system.”

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