'Burned out': Nurses join travel nursing agencies for more flexibility, higher pay
CBC
As Nova Scotia grapples with a health-care system under strain, some nurses in the province are signing contracts with travel nursing agencies to work elsewhere in Canada.
Higher pay and more flexible schedules are two reasons early career nurses are leaving Nova Scotia hospitals, as Nova Scotia Health struggles to fill 1,024 vacant nursing positions and concerns about working conditions persist.
Some Nova Scotian travel nurses say there are no retention strategies in place to keep nurses here and alleviate staffing shortages. And there are no incentives for travel nurses to return to full-time staff positions, they say, because they are paid at least double the hourly wage of public-sector nurses and can take unlimited time off between four- to six-week contracts.
Hugh Gillis, vice-president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, said the health authority needs to address these issues to keep nurses on staff.
"Our nurses are burned out because recruitment and retention issues have been ignored for so long, they're unable to get time off when they need it," Gillis said.
"If you're working 16-hour days, five to six days a week, there's no future in that," he said. "It's not sustainable over the long term.
"It's about work-life balance, and if you push people hard enough, they're simply going to go elsewhere."
Nicole Horechuk started travel nursing only two years into her career.
She worked full-time staff positions in two different Nova Scotia emergency rooms, but quickly found she was working so many hours she had no time to enjoy other activities.
"I was granted little to no vacation time," she said. "So I dropped to a casual position and started travel nursing."
Horechuk saw it as a learning opportunity to practise her skills in rural hospitals while seeing different parts of Canada — plus it paid a lot more money.
"I have definitely asked myself, am I part of the problem? But the answer is no," Horechuk said. "If I wasn't doing travel nursing, I wouldn't be able to do this job at the bedside at all. I would be feeling too burned out.
"This way, I'm still working in an emergency department. I'm still at the bedside. I'm still providing direct patient care in an area that is short staffed," she said.
Some nurses choose not to stay at all.
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