Sask. nurses short-staffed and frustrated as pandemic drags on

A new survey from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) is quantifying the frustration felt by nurses in the province and notes many have considered quitting.

In a news release, the union said more than 57 per cent of members who responded said they’d thought about quitting nursing the last year.

The survey also found almost 83 per cent of respondents had vacancies in their workplace, which the union said is more than double the number found in 2021.

Nurses aren’t feeling good about their jobs — the survey found 73 per cent of respondents reported a greater concern with safety, nearly the same felt anxious and helpless, 77 per cent had feelings of frustration or anger, and 76 per cent were uncertain and lacked confidence in leadership.

In a news release, union president Tracy Zambory said the recent provincial budget doesn’t do enough to deal with the problems health care is dealing with right now.

“Without immediate relief, more registered nurses are going to leave the profession. It feels like we’re trying to dig ourselves out of a hole without a shovel,” Zambory said in the news release.

When confronted with numbers from the survey, Health Minister Paul Merriman said he has heard some of the same things before.

“I’m hopeful that the number they addressed of how many people are considering leaving the profession isn’t accurate,” Merriman said. “The people that I’ve talked to, yeah, they’ve had a tough go. We all know that, we recognize that and we thank them for what they’ve done in the last two years.”

The minister said it’s his responsibility to find people to back fill health-care positions and said the government is doing that, pointing to money allocated in the budget to health-care recruitment and retention.

However, Merriman also recognized that even the short-term plan in the budget, international recruiting, could take a while; he said he’s hoping the government has people on the ground in six to 12 months.

The SUN survey also found that 68 per cent of respondents gave Premier Scott Moe and Merriman a negative performance rating.

Merriman said he understands his performance is a focal point and he takes the good with the bad in that position.

“And if people are critical of my position, then that’s fine. The only thing I would ask is if they offer some solutions that we can work with them on and work together on this,” said Merriman.

Interim Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili said it’s striking that so many nurses have considered leaving their jobs, and that the health-care system is already deeply understaffed. He pointed to surgical wait times, wait for access to primary care and access to imaging.

“(If) you start losing more people from our hospitals, from our long-term care centres, I don’t know where we go next and I really worry that we’re going to see a situation like we’ve seen over the last two years for very acute reasons,” Meili said. “We’re going to instead see a chronic failure of access to health care, to the basics, at a time when people really need it.”

Meili said keeping nurses in their jobs requires a change in attitude from the provincial government — that instead of giving empty thanks, the government needs to involve health-care groups to figure out the next phase of responding to health-care challenges.

The opposition leader accused the health minister of dismissing the problems brought up in the SUN survey.

“He’s talking about plans that will bring more nurses into Saskatchewan maybe years down the road, but we need to work hard to keep the ones we’ve got here right now,” Meili said.

The SUN survey was sent to the more than 11,000 union members, with 1,530 taking part. The survey was conducted online in February and March of this year. The union said the general margin of error on this survey is plus or minus 2.3 per cent at the 95 per cent confidence level.