Nova Scotia Health seeks Ukrainians with health-care training to help with province's crisis

Nova Scotia Health is looking for Ukrainians with health-care training to help fill openings across the province.

“It can really be looked at as a silver spoon for Nova Scotians,” says Rick Langille.

Langille is a volunteer with the Nova Scotia chapter of a group called Atlantic Canadian Hosts for Ukraine. 

Their goal is to help those fleeing the war in Ukraine get settled in Nova Scotia.

Langille says he’s had a number of inquiries from trained health-care professionals about working in the province.

“They are nurses, they’re gynecologists, they’re doctors, lots of health-care professionals with concerns about the qualifications they would need to work in the Nova Scotia health-care system,” Langille says.

That’s where Nova Scotia Health is stepping in.

“We would certainly welcome health-care workers from Ukraine to come and stay with us,” says Health Minister Michelle Thompson.

Thompson says they're currently looking to recruit Ukrainians to help fill a variety of roles in the province's health-care system, but adds filling those job vacancies isn’t a simple process.

“We also have a credentialing requirement, so we would look at the program that they took and we would compare it to the requirements for here and then we would look at whether or not there is a gap that needs to be bridged as a result,” Thompson says.

“We could help them, but the flipside is, maybe they are helping us more than we are helping them, so it’s a good situation,” Langille says.

Currently, Nova Scotia Health has more than 2,100 health-care job openings across the province.