Quebec to spend $80M on improving nurses' working conditions

The Quebec government will spend $80 million on measures aimed at offsetting a chronic shortage of nurses in the provinces, Health Minister Philippe Couillard announced Tuesday.

The money will be used to buy updated medical equipment for hospitals and adjust schedules so that nurses work fewer weekends.

New nurses will also get more on-the-job support and mentoring, Couillard said.

"We have a window of opportunity now to deeply transform the way people work and concentrate nursing … on its true professional expertise and bringing new people into the team, like 'infirmières auxilliaires' [nurse-practitioners] and orderlies, for example," he said in Quebec City Tuesday.

"This is the new constitution of teams that is going to allow us to bridge the gap in numbers."

The province has suffered from acute nursing shortages in home care, seniors' care and ICU wards for years, a trend Couillard said won't be reversed until a new generation of nurses graduates from university.

The measures may spur some retired and part-time nurses to return to work, said Francine Girard, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing Sciences at the University of Montreal.

"It's an attractive means to bring them on board full-time, and of course, it is a retention mechanism as well, because they feel wanted, and they will have now — we hope — the mentoring as well," said Girard, who recently chaired a provincial task force on the working conditions of nurses.

"It will be a lot more interesting to come to work."

The measures should offset the exodus of public-care nurses to private agencies.

They should also reduce the need to make nurses work overtime on a weekly basis, which leads to burnout, Couillard said.

Individual hospitals will be free to implement any of the proposed measures, he added.