‘A bold step’: Province announces new measures to help retain nurses in BC

Last April, the Province and the BC Nurses’ Union (BCNU) came to an agreement on an endeavour that would attempt to bring more nurses into the province and retain them.

They are achieving this through a $237 million investment to determine new minimum nurse-to-patient ratios which will make nursing in BC more desirable. 

The Province says that minimum nurse-to-patient ratios represent the minimum number of nurses deemed necessary to care for a maximum number of patients on a given unit.

“Nurses play an important and pivotal role in providing quality patient care,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. 

“Through our collaborative work with the BCNU, we are taking critical steps to address staffing challenges around the province.” 

Dix says he believes the best way to make nurses want to come to BC to further their career, is to make the workplace conditions and workload desirable. 

The BC Ministry of Health and the BCNU have now established new nurse-to-patient ratios in six different settings within acute care facilities such as hospitals.

For example, the new ratio will be four patients to every one nurse in most adult medical and surgical units. On units with more high-acuity or severe patients, the new ratio will be two patients to every one nurse. 

Going forward, the Ministry of Health will be working with the province’s health authorities such as Island Health to establish and implement policies to support these new ratios. 

The next phase of this new legislation will be to establish ratios to implement in remaining hospital settings and non-hospital settings, such as long-term care and health authority community settings. 

This work is to be done by June 2024, according to the Province. 

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“This is an important announcement for nurses and patients in BC,” said Adriane Gear, President, BCNU. 

“This commitment is a bold step for government to take and we commend its willingness to listen, learn and invest in nurses. We know that minimum nurse-to-patient ratios improve job satisfaction, create safe and healthy workplaces for nurses and improve patient care.”

That $237 million investment made by the Province in this endeavour will be put toward encouraging nurses who have left BC to return, recruiting new nurses and retaining the nurses already here.

The Province says that $169.5 million in one-time funding will be aimed at rural nursing retention incentives and signing bonuses and $68 million will be diverted to funding for training programs to make it more accessible for  internationally educated nurses to get into the workforce.