Wow, okay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are also for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Could the Minister please confirm if the majority of need for agency nurses is in obstetrics? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Mr. Speaker, we only have two obstetric units in the Northwest Territories. One is at Stanton, one is in Inuvik, and that is currently where they are. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that clarity.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister confirm although I did hear her say a little bit about this in an earlier answer, so I'll reframe my question on the fly. Can the Minister confirm how local nurses are being able to be or will be able to be trained in labour and delivery. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for this question. Currently, yes, nurses can train in the Northwest Territories to be obstetric nurses. How they do that, you know, there's multiple different ways. Back in the day when I trained, it was more of a mentorship, and you take certifications. Now it's a little bit more technical. So they do have to have hours. They do have to have a mentor. Currently, within our OBS, there are nurses receiving training and becoming fully competent in this specialized area. And as a result of this training, we have increased our capacity. And although the OBS unit still requires agency support to offset some of these vacancies, they're also allowing training of labour and delivery nurses in the need in this unit. So I just want to make sure that the Member knows that over the time that these nurses have been training as well is that the less and less we're becoming reliant on them in this unit. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister. That's really great to hear. And to, you know, echo my colleague from Monfwi's statement earlier today, it's really good to hear that this Minister's supporting things over time and getting us there, and I hope she can get us there as quickly as possible. So to that end, is the Minister's department willing to invest further in training local NWT health care workers to increase their skill sets? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can confirm we have things in place already, and I think the more and more we are starting to utilizing them to fill and train specialized nursing, we have a specialized nursing training program. We have the Targeted Academic Support Program. We have professional development initiative funding, which can all be accessed by current staff who wish to gain their certification to work in more specialized areas. And as mentioned, any RN who is interested to being trained in a specialty area can submit their request in a few different ways by applying to the specialized nursing training program or can reach out to their supervisor. And I am hopeful that we can repeat our successes in other areas that we have been able to eliminate agency nurses in the main hospital. And over the past year, through interventions like specialized nursing transition programs, which as a combination of recruitment efforts, has allowed us to eliminate agency nurses in our operating room, in the medicine units, and effectively reducing overall agency nurses by half of what it was at this time last year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from the Sahtu.
