Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve got questions today for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Getting back to my Member’s statement where I was talking about northern nursing grads, this year we’re expecting to graduate 19 and next year 16 and then in 2013, 32. So we’re going to have close to 65 northern nursing grads enter into our health care system hopefully in the next three years.
I’d like to ask the Minister, it was almost four years ago she went to Aurora College and spoke to the students just entering the program, promising them jobs upon completion of the program. I’d like to ask her what planning has gone into help integrate northern nursing grads into our health care system. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s no question that our Northern Nursing Program is a success story. We have produced a lot of excellent graduates and the last fiscal year we were able to place all 11 of them; nine of them in Yellowknife and two in Hay River. So, Mr. Speaker, I’m confident that we will be able to use the training that these nurses have received in various communities and health centres and hospitals around the Territories. Thank you.
Thank you. I hope the Minister can appreciate the fact that these graduates are months away from completing the program, yet when they look at the government website and any job postings, there are just none available and they’re left scratching their head saying, well, the Minister was here three years ago and promised us jobs, where are they? Then they see locum and agency nurses working in our health authorities and at Stanton and they wonder where are the postings. I’d like to ask the Minister if she can explain the fact that we have these locum and agency nurses here and no job postings for nurses. Thank you.
Thank you. We are in communication with the graduating class of nurses at Aurora College. They are made aware that they wouldn’t be applying for jobs on the website, that they will be eligible to join the Graduate Employment Program process, that we will have a list of jobs available for them. HR and HSSA, Department of Health staff, are going in there to talk to the nursing graduates and we will be working with them to find placements for them. They will be asked to give their preference of what communities they would like to practice in. We want to match those, but those are not always possible.
This is an NWT employment program. The Graduate Employment Program is an NWT program, this is Government of the NWT. We would like to recruit and retain nurses to work in all parts of the Territories, so we are fully committed to working with the nursing grads to match them with employment. Thank you.
Thank you. It sounds like as far as the department is concerned, it’s a year-to-year process and they just take each year as it comes. I’m not sure if coming up with a better plan and a long-range plan to accommodate, like I said, 65 grads in the next three years might be something that’s worthwhile to the department and to this government. I’d like to ask the Minister, does the Department of Health and Social Services and the health authorities consider positions that are currently filled by locums and agency nurses to be vacant and why aren’t those positions posted? Thank you.
Thank you. As we’ve discussed over the last two days, the use of agency nurses has gone down substantially. Locum nurses we have in Stanton, for example, are really, really hard to recruit nurses. So as the Member knows, or anybody who knows about nursing, nurses all come with different training, different backgrounds, different skill sets that we need. So I don’t think we should be distracted by having to use some locum nurses that means that we’re not giving those jobs to new grads. New grads have to go through the Graduate Employment Program, they need more training in different settings before they can be put into practice settings. They wouldn’t be, I don’t think, ready to apply to a job that’s available on the website right away. So I’ve stated, and of course we work year by year, every year we get a new graduating class of nurses and as I’ve stated, the Department of HR and my department and the health authorities are and will continue to work with the graduating class to place them in an appropriate setting and in as a compatible setting as possible, but we need to ask the grads to be able to look beyond Yellowknife if they can’t be matched in Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sounds like we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that locum nurses are going to be in these positions and the department and the authorities are not going to post the positions to be filled by resident nurses here in the Northwest Territories. Is that what I’m hearing the Minister say? That locums are there permanently, we’re not posting those jobs? I’d like to ask the Minister why aren’t we posting the jobs that locums are filling today. Thank you.
Good question.
Mr. Speaker, it has to go without saying that our system would rather hire our own local nurses before we would have agency nurses or locum nurses. So if there are any jobs that are...
Mr. Speaker, as I’ve stated, if the Member would listen, these nurse graduates don’t go through a regular hiring process; they go through a Graduate Employment Program. They go through a separate preferential program that the government has organized with HR, and HR people are talking to the graduating class. We are going to have a list of positions that could be matched up with them.
So, Mr. Speaker, I want to state for the record for the people out there and the graduates and nursing students in the classroom, that we are committed to working with them to make sure that we do everything we can to find them employment and that we will be providing them with the information. The fact that the jobs are not being posted should not be a distraction. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
