Impact of the Pandemic on Nursing Workforce in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic posed prominent challenges to the nursing profession. Students pursuing nursing courses in Canada had to face many challenges. 

After the pandemic, there has been a need to overcome the challenges in nursing education and workforce for promoting the professional development of nurses. In Canada, nurses are the foundation of the healthcare system. Together with other healthcare professionals, nurses keep the system running. 

Mentioned below are the four key factors that highlight the impact of the pandemic on the nursing workforce in Canada.  

Nursing Workforce Supply: 

There was an increase in the supply of healthcare workers including nurses and other healthcare professionals. Physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, and everyone increased in numbers. Most of these healthcare professionals worked in a role related to their field of expertise. 

Nursing Workforce Capacity: 

New ways were looked to build the healthcare workforce capacity. The increase in supply of healthcare workers helped in welcoming the new entrants to the profession. 

Many nursing professionals including the ones who had just completed their nursing courses in Canada joined their practice. Despite the increased workforce, healthcare worker infections sometimes led to shortages. This further led many healthcare settings to implement ways for maintaining suitable and safe staffing levels

. 

Nursing Workforce in Virtual Care: 

For containing the spread of COVID, so many healthcare professionals started offering virtual care including physicians. Many nurses along with physicians started offering virtual care services in Canada. This led nurses to explore the digital medium for offering healthcare services. 

Nursing Workforce in Long-Term Care: 

Canada’s long term nursing care was affected seriously by the pandemic. The registered nurses made up the largest proportion of nurses working in this area. These nurses also had the highest proportion of part-time and casual workers compared with other nurses working in long term care. 

Conclusion:

During the pandemic, nurses have continued to provide care to patients despite being exhausted and at risk of infection. Even amidst the risk of infection, fear of transmitting the disease to family members and the loss of patients and colleagues, nurses did not give up. 

Although this negatively affected the mental health of nurses, it has also promoted their position as caregivers within the healthcare industry. Canada understands and acknowledges the work done by nurses even more than before, which led to better nursing education and employment opportunities.