N.B. health network gives recruitment update: 'We'll be at this for a while'

New Brunswick's Horizon Health Network has recruited almost 2,400 new health care professionals for the province, but it's only a net gain of 550 employees.

The health authority made the announcement Wednesday morning with the recruitment numbers coming from the 2022/2023 fiscal year.

In total, 528 registered nurses, 337 licenced practical nurses and 523 personal care attendants were recruited to come work in the province.

Hundreds of additional support staff and allied health professionals have also been recruited by Horizon.

New Brunswick Health Minister Bruce Fitch called the numbers progress. 

“We're not ready to hoist the banner that says mission complete because we know that we have to continue working day in and day out along with the hard working folks right throughout the health care system,” said Fitch.

The Liberal health critic says any gain is good news, but complaints continue to pour in from New Brunswickers who are having a hard time accessing care.

“We're still losing a lot of workers that are facing burn-out. I know recent studies have shown that nurses for example are leaving the profession at a very young age,” said McKee.

Gail Lebel, Horizon vice-president and chief human resource officer, said recruitment directly impacts wait times and patient care and access.

Lebel said one cause of all the departures is the ongoing impact of the global pandemic.

"There's lots of areas that need to be worked on, including our work environment," said Lebel. "I think the good news is we have improved our turnover year over year."

The focus of Wednesday's report was nurses, home care workers and other support staff.

Horizon did not provide numbers for physician recruitment in the announcement, but promised to provide an update in the coming weeks.

Kerry Kennedy, Horizon’s regional director of talent acquisition, said all positions in the health network are a challenge to recruit.

"We used to identify our top five hard to recruit and that would be physicians, nurses, psychologists and everything. Everything is a challenge to recruit and all of our efforts doesn't rest on the shoulders of one profession. It's a unified collective effort," said Kennedy.

McKee said the health care workforce is struggling across the country.

“We're all competing to get workers here,” said McKee. “We need to step up our game in terms of offering incentive packages to get people here.”

Horizon listed several recruitment initiatives in its report today, including overseas trips to India, Dubai and the United Kingdom.

Fitch said that's one of the keys to getting people to come here, but there's also internal recruitment as well.

“We're trying to make it easier for folks to migrate within Canada, if they want to come back to New Brunswick or if they want to come work here in New Brunswick. And also some of our internationally educated nurses who are working with the nurses association to again expedite that pathway,” said Fitch.

The health network also helped recruit new employees through partnerships with the Vitalité Health Network, the Department of Health and other provincial departments.

"Everybody understands the challenges with recruitment and retention and everybody has a vested interest in it and for that New Brunswick will see success," said Kennedy about the partnerships.

Lebel cautioned there was still a lot of work to do.

"We still have lots of vacancies so we'll be at this for a while and we need to improve our engagement and retention," said Lebel.

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