As government leaders, medical officials, and community leaders discuss and debate the shortage of health care workers in Ontario, current job postings show there are more than 150 openings for Registered Nurses (RNs), Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) and Public Health Nurses in Sudbury alone.
This is based on job postings evident on the websites for Health Sciences North (HSN) and Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) as of Monday afternoon August 22.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is meeting with the premiers of Atlantic Canada today to discuss the problems with the health care system, which includes the worker shortage.
The shortage of qualified health workers across Ontario has been blamed for such things as closing emergency departments in some communities as well as limiting the number of non-emergency medical procedures.
The Sudbury health unit job postings are mostly for vaccination efforts in the community, along with school health and mental health.
In the past two and a half years during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been numerous stories of nurses and other health workers experiencing burnout and job dissatisfaction over unexpectedly long hours and limits on pay increases.
Several public sector unions and politicians have spoken out against Ontario Bill 124 saying it has unfairly punished health care workers.
The concern about Bill 124 is that it put a one-per-cent wage cap, per year, on any increases that could be won by public sector employers, such as Registered Nurses, Registered Practical Nurses and several other classes of health-care workers. The limit is for three years.
At HSN, the webpage for career opportunities has dozens of positions for a variety of specific health care jobs. In addition to roughly 50 positions for a wide variety of hospital-related jobs, there is a separate page listing 38 positions for RPNs and another showing 52 positions for RNs.
At PHSD, the webpage for current employment opportunities has two separate listings for nurses, one for 15 positions for the vaccine preventable diseases team and the COVID and schools team.
The second listing has 24 positions for healthy families, school health and mental health positions. In both cases, most of the positions are listed as full-time temporary or part-time temporary.
The health unit website also shows several other administrative and clerical jobs such as health inspectors, health promoter, a finance clerk and even a job for a high school student to snitch on retailers who would sell tobacco products to an underage person.
