N.W.T. nursing students concerned nursing shortage will affect critical mentorships

Two nursing students from the N.W.T. say they have no intention of changing their plans to do frontline nursing in the North, despite their concerns that the national nursing shortage will leave them without adequate mentorship when they graduate.

Ongoing nurse and doctor shortages in the N.W.T. led to a reduction in intensive care beds at Stanton Territorial Hospital last year, and a three-month closure of the obstetrics ward. Some health services in small communities were temporarily suspended, and the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority briefly cut services and in-patient beds at that hospital this month, while warning about ongoing shortages for the next six months.

In a recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, 27 per cent of the 4,400 nurses they surveyed are considering leaving their current job, and 19 per cent are considering leaving the profession altogether. 

For Yellowknifer Shiri McPherson, a third-year nursing student at York University in Toronto, those statistics add to a situation she calls "terrifying" — especially given that nearly half of the mid- to late-career nurses surveyed are the ones considering leaving.

Those are the nurses McPherson and her classmates were counting on when they entered the work force. 

"When you graduate, you have kind of a buffer year or two where you have a nurse just, like, mentor you and kind of guide you through," McPherson told Loren McGinnis, host of The Trailbreaker, CBC North's morning radio show in the N.W.T. 

She says it's something her classmates have been talking about.

"Oh crap, we're going to graduate. There's going to be no nurses left to mentor," she said. 

Researching the nursing shortage

Hay River's Samantha Goodwin is in her third year of nursing at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

"I am fearful that we won't have as much expertise [as] the mid- to late-career nurses, the ones that give some guidance to new grads," she said.  "I know that it is kind of scarce right now and it will only continue to be more scarce for getting that guidance."

The situation has both Goodwin and McPherson talking about the need for the next generation of nurses to advocate for themselves and their patients. 

McPherson and her classmates decided to take on the nursing shortage as a class project in their leadership course. 

"We are the future generation of nurses. And if … the foundation's not stable, what can we do to help build that back up?" she said 

McPherson says they identified multiple factors behind the shortage — from government policy, to leadership styles and workplace violence. With that research, they're reaching out to policy makers and the public, but they're also asking what they can do as new nurses. 

"How we can change our practice personally? You know, like the leadership styles we want to bring forward, how to raise awareness on how to prevent burnout, and raise awareness on the amount of, you know, abuse and mistreatment towards nurses."  

Goodwin says studying nursing at this point in health-care history has made her more politically aware. 

"It all starts with the bigger government and … what they have in store for health care, what their budgeting looks like, what their plans look like."  

Last summer, Goodwin worked as a health-care aide at the Hay River Regional Health Centre and she's heading back there this summer. 

She and McPherson say nurses are always at high risk of burnout, because it's a caring profession. 

One thing Goodwin says the N.W.T. government is doing right is providing free telephone counselling to nurses experiencing burnout and trauma, something she's not seen in Alberta.

'I still want to make my mark'

Goodwin knows she's choosing a demanding career, but it's been her plan since childhood to do bedside nursing.  

"I still want to be able to make my mark … while setting my personal boundaries."

McPherson says a lot of her classmates are reconsidering a future in bedside nursing because of the stress of the nursing shortages, but she's not. 

She's a survivor of childhood cancer who says the care she received from nurses inspired her to be able to provide the same kind of care herself. 

"If the state of nursing continues to be what it is now, I know that I'm not going to be able to do that. And that makes me quite sad, honestly."