A new initiative offering nurses incentives to fill a critical need in hospitals is the province and regional health authorities grasping at ways to reduce stress on the system, according to the president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union.
The eight-week placement offers retired nurses or those with critical care experience a $1,000 signing bonus, among other enticements, to join the Critical Care Nurse Deployment Initiative.
Participants will also receive a $1,000 weekly premium per 37.5 hours worked, in addition to their hourly wage, along with compensation for travel, lodging and meals while on deployment.
Paula Doucet said she doesn’t know if the initiative will work, but added, “we won’t know unless we try.”
“Is it perfect? Absolutely not, I don’t think anything is, but right now we are struggling to deliver care to New Brunswickers and this is one attempt to try and alleviate some of those stresses and put experienced nurses back into the field,” Doucet said.
“The whole premise about this is to try to see if there’s any retired critical care nurses, nurses that have recently left their jobs within in New Brunswick to potentially take travel nurse positions elsewhere, nurses that have just up and quit the profession altogether,” Doucet said.
In speaking with her counterparts at the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, Doucet said no one else is currently looking at this type of deployment initiative.
“I think it’s probably one of the richer ones. I have recently heard of Ontario putting internationally-educated nurses into the system a little quicker than they would normally do,” Doucet said.
Nurses who decide to take part must be ready to travel to any provincial healthcare facility based on the needs of the regional health authorities.
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