New Brunswick Nurses Union highlights the positives to the profession with new campaign

Nurses across New Brunswick are standing up with an important message for a new campaign that aims at retaining and recruiting more staff into the profession.

“It’s about portraying what nurses actually do,” said New Brunswick Nurses Union President, Paula Doucet.

She says the last number of years have been challenging, pointing at the pandemic, staffing shortages and working conditions.

Adding that right now there are 1,200 nursing vacancies across the province, but the hope is NBNU’s new campaign, Still Calling, will help paint the career in a better light.

“A lot of young folks would say ‘why would I go into nursing if it’s that bad?’ When really we’re saying ‘you know what, in order to make it better and for us to deliver the care that we want, to deliver to New Brunswickers especially, we’re tying to attract more people to consider nursing because despite the working conditions, it is absolutely a fabulous career.’”

Laura Johnston has been a nurse for 23 years and she admits that there have been days where going to work hasn’t been easy.

“It has been a struggle for nurses to come to work every day not knowing am I going to have enough staff on the floor to look after the acuity of the patients,” she said.

However, despite the challenges, she knows that this is the only career for her.

“Do I ever regret becoming a nurse? Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” she said.

“I would do it in a heart beat all over again.”

It’s stories like Johnston’s that the union is hoping to highlight and bring to the forefront.

30 nurses across the province shared their personal stories about why they became a nurse. The hope is to help retain current nurses by reminding them why they chose this profession in the first place or how it is a calling to them.

“The reason I became a nurse was my dad,” said Johnston.

“My dad was actually a volunteer paramedic and he was so involved with that and he got me so excited every time he‘d come home.”

While there is a big focus on retention and encouraging nurses to take a step back from the day-to-day, Doucet says recruiting new nurses is a top priority.

“Hopefully it’s far reaching in the fact that maybe there are New Brunswick nurses that are elsewhere across Canada that are willing to consider to come back home, but I think the biggest thing for us is really reaching to those young folks that are, you know, whether you’re in junior high school or high school and not really certain which career path you want to take, I’m really hoping to connect with them,” she said.

According to the New Brunswick Nurses Union, 41 per cent of the provinces nurses are eligible to retire in the next five years, making this push for new staff timely and significant.

“We hope to garnish some interest and then it would be to push the universities and the community colleges to ensure that they have enough seats accessible and available for students who want to take nursing,” said Doucet.

Officials say the campaign highlights positivity, support, and what nursing truly is.

“Nurses like to just be there for one another,” said Johnston.

“It’s like we’re a big family and we want to provide support, not just to our patients and their families, but also to each other.”

Doucet adds that it’s about pointing out the significant role that nurses have in the community and to people during some of their happiest and most challenging times.

“I think without nurses in our health-care system, there would not be a health-care system,” she said.

“A nurse evaluates and they assess the whole person, the whole patient, client and resident. It’s just not dealing with the one issue, we’re very holistic care givers, we’re very educated, we have a breath and depth of knowledge […] nursing is very unique in the fact that we take care of the whole patient.”

More information on the campaign can be found here: https://www.stillcalling.ca 

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