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You wonder why we're short of nurses (and doctors)


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In order to limit costs the provinces limit the number of people who can get into nursing and medical schools. We could be graduating far more doctors and nurses, but won't, because you practically need to be a genius even to get into nursing school. Never mind medical school.

Abby Poffenroth spent her high school years focused on one thing: becoming a nurse.

When she graduated this past spring with a 94 per cent average, Poffenroth never imagined she wouldn't make the cut for the program at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S.

"I knew it was pretty competitive, but I didn't realize it was as competitive as it was until I got the letter saying I was not accepted," said Poffenroth, 18, who is from Antigonish.

"I had my mind so set on it.... I wasn't really thinking about any other options."

Nova Scotia's desperate need for nurses has some people questioning why the province doesn't simply train more people like Poffenroth, especially as those who are from the province are more likely to stay and work.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nursing-shortage-program-seats-1.6234226

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10 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

I'd be interested in hearing more perspectives on this, but your take on it doesn't surprise me at all either

The thing to bear in mind is these high requirements aren't there because you can't do the job with lower marks. They're kept high to screen out all but the number of people they can accept for the positions they're allowed to offer. This is not a situation where they're allowed to increase the seats based on demand. Nor is medical school.

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1 hour ago, Argus said:

The thing to bear in mind is these high requirements aren't there because you can't do the job with lower marks. They're kept high to screen out all but the number of people they can accept for the positions they're allowed to offer. This is not a situation where they're allowed to increase the seats based on demand. Nor is medical school.

As I say, I'm not surprised by your findings... But I have also heard the opposite that they graduate too many for some positions basically to get the tuition which is subsidized also.

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2 hours ago, Argus said:

In order to limit costs the provinces limit the number of people who can get into nursing and medical schools. We could be graduating far more doctors and nurses, but won't, because you practically need to be a genius even to get into nursing school. Never mind medical school.

Abby Poffenroth spent her high school years focused on one thing: becoming a nurse.

When she graduated this past spring with a 94 per cent average, Poffenroth never imagined she wouldn't make the cut for the program at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S.

"I knew it was pretty competitive, but I didn't realize it was as competitive as it was until I got the letter saying I was not accepted," said Poffenroth, 18, who is from Antigonish.

"I had my mind so set on it.... I wasn't really thinking about any other options."

Nova Scotia's desperate need for nurses has some people questioning why the province doesn't simply train more people like Poffenroth, especially as those who are from the province are more likely to stay and work.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nursing-shortage-program-seats-1.6234226

The small number of slots available means they can be super selective when it comes to students. You won't get into engineering at UBC without an average well into the nineties.

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13 minutes ago, Aristides said:

The small number of slots available means they can be super selective when it comes to students. You won't get into engineering at UBC without an average well into the nineties.

Yes, but nobody is complaining about engineer shortages like nursing and doctor shortages.  

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12 hours ago, Aristides said:

Engineering companies are.

Nobody is complaining about the shortage of gender studies grads, or social studies or other grads from the humanities, social studies or various grievance studies. Maybe we should stop funding those.

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28 minutes ago, Argus said:

Nobody is complaining about the shortage of gender studies grads, or social studies or other grads from the humanities, social studies or various grievance studies. Maybe we should stop funding those.

It's a lot easier to get into the programmes and as such the parents/customers get their expected postsecondary education provided.  Does it make sense ?  I wouldn't say it does either, but people who call for education reform in this way invariably have a political axe to grind anyway...

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And more on the Nursing Education backlog.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-nursing-schools-cant-accommodate-increase-in-demand-at-time-when/

 

Quote

“I would not necessarily recommend that we try to speed up the education process,” she said. She added that it is equally or more important to ensure that nurses have input into the way they work.

Dr. Smith said there is a need for “unprecedented collaboration” between nursing schools and colleges, hospitals and governments.


Governments need to pay attention to this nuts and bolts stuff which doesn't get into the headlines until it's too late.  Too much politics is devoted to stupid and vain "identity fights".  I would also include in this the ridiculous transit issue in Toronto which results in nothing being built... 

Germany used to be famously good at brokering education systems that produce knowledgable adults, trained individuals as well as post-secondary education for professionals and academics too.  

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34 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

So this is 4 years old and would indicate that we're not short of doctors due to medical school graduate numbers being low.

https://meds.queensu.ca/ugme-blog/archives/3568

 

There are two things about this which come to mind. The first is that our universities accept and graduate a lot (I don't know how many) of foreign students whose tuition is paid for by their governments. Saudis, as one example. They have no intention of working in Canada, but they do take med school positions and they also take residency positions. This article doesn't seem to account for them. How many of these fulfil their residency requirements and then go home to Saudi Arabia or wherever? 

The second is to wonder how many foreign grads are allowed. There are only 3300 residency positions and we get 2500 requests in addition to the 2900 graduates from our schools. So the blockage would seem to be the number of residency positions which are restricted. Although since this in turn restricts the number of med school positions it's a moot point.

We need more residency positions, obviously, but that too is something the governments are keeping down for cost saving purposes. I doubt, frankly, whether this really saves much money. I suspect it's a false saving in that it discourages people from getting prompt medical attention until things get so bad it's much more costly to treat.

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25 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

And more on the Nursing Education backlog.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-nursing-schools-cant-accommodate-increase-in-demand-at-time-when/

 


Governments need to pay attention to this nuts and bolts stuff which doesn't get into the headlines until it's too late.  Too much politics is devoted to stupid and vain "identity fights".  I would also include in this the ridiculous transit issue in Toronto which results in nothing being built... 

Germany used to be famously good at brokering education systems that produce knowledgable adults, trained individuals as well as post-secondary education for professionals and academics too.  

From what I understand they have a top notch medical system without the waits we have come to take as normal. They also have private hospitals and health care providers supplementing a robust public health system.

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15 minutes ago, Argus said:

There are two things about this which come to mind. The first is that our universities accept and graduate a lot (I don't know how many) of foreign students whose tuition is paid for by their governments. Saudis, as one example. They have no intention of working in Canada, but they do take med school positions and they also take residency positions. This article doesn't seem to account for them. How many of these fulfil their residency requirements and then go home to Saudi Arabia or wherever?

Which is fine as long as we have enough Drs and from the stats I understood that we do.

15 minutes ago, Argus said:

The second is to wonder how many foreign grads are allowed. There are only 3300 residency positions and we get 2500 requests in addition to the 2900 graduates from our schools. So the blockage would seem to be the number of residency positions which are restricted. Although since this in turn restricts the number of med school positions it's a moot point.

Again, it didn't seem like there were too many who weren't getting placed. 

 

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25 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

Which is fine as long as we have enough Drs and from the stats I understood that we do.

Again, it didn't seem like there were too many who weren't getting placed. 

 

We do NOT have enough doctors. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many people who can't get a GP and you wouldn't have to wait for months and months to see any specialist or surgeon. We have a much lower number of doctors to population as compared to European countries.

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48 minutes ago, Argus said:

We do NOT have enough doctors. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many people who can't get a GP and you wouldn't have to wait for months and months to see any specialist or surgeon. We have a much lower number of doctors to population as compared to European countries.

Ok, I missed that the system as a whole needs them.  Different than the nurse situation, I see.

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49 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

Ok, I missed that the system as a whole needs them.  Different than the nurse situation, I see.

We’re expanding our population at a far greater pace than the ability of gut health care system to produce enough doctors and nurses to compensate.   The ratio of patients per doctors and patients per nurses is growing exponentially.  But the endless unlimited immigration crowd don’t care.  They don’t care about the impact on housing, on the environment, on education, on anything.

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42 minutes ago, Shady said:

We’re expanding our population at a far greater pace than the ability of gut health care system to produce enough doctors and nurses to compensate.   The ratio of patients per doctors and patients per nurses is growing exponentially.  But the endless unlimited immigration crowd don’t care.  They don’t care about the impact on housing, on the environment, on education, on anything.

Amazingly that is what the natives said when the colonials arrived (well not exactly, but we all know) and that if it wasn't for immigration I'd probably be living in Europe today. 

Where would you be living today?

Think about it. 

Edited by Cannucklehead
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8 minutes ago, Cannucklehead said:

Amazingly that is what the natives said when the colonials arrived (well not exactly, but we all know) and that if it wasn't for immigration I'd probably be living in Europe today. 

Where would you be living today?

Think about it. 

Non sequitur.

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