BC Nurses’ Union pushing for more nursing students, TRU says not enough clinical space at RIH

KAMLOOPS — By 2030, the province needs 26,000 new nurses just to keep up.

BC Nurses’ Union (BCNU) president Aman Grewal says the B.C. government has known for decades of the pending nursing shortage and hasn’t acted accordingly.

“We spoke about this 10, 20 years ago that this was going to happen, and [government] just has not kept up with the seats and getting the nurses into the system,” said Grewal.

With nurses in high demand right now, BCNU says the province needs to step up and fund more spaces at schools like Thompson Rivers University.

“Every person that is on a waitlist, they should all be offered a seat — put the funding into there and get them trained,” said president Aman Grewal. “It’s going to take three to four years to get them trained, but let’s start now so there’s never a waitlist.”

Earlier this year, the province announced 600 new nursing seats, hoping to close the gap.

TRU’s School of Nursing graduates about 100 students every year, but the dean says the solution isn’t as easy as upping the number of nursing students. There are not enough clinic hours at RIH to accomodate a huge jump in students.

“As it is, hospitals are looking at how many students can you accomodate on a unit,” said Dean of Nursing Rani Srivastava. “You have to look at the bigger system impact and how are those nurses in practice settings being supported for having students on an evening, night, weekend. What does that mean for our faculty?”

TRU is focused on launching a nurse practitioner program, but has provincial funding now to accept 10 licensed practical nurses, LPNs, to upgrade their skills. They’re now hoping to reduce their coursework to get the nurses back into the healthcare system faster.

“Right now it’s three years. Most of them are coming into year two of our BScN program, then they do year two, three and four. We’re looking to see how we can shorten it, so they might be able to finish it in two years. We don’t have that in place yet, but we hope to in the next year,” said Srivastava.

The BC Nurses’ Union acknowledges it needs to promote nursing as a viable career to kids at a young age.

“We need to get to them when they’re like eight years ago. We need to get into elementary schools because once they’re already into the junior high or high school, they may already have taken another direction in the courses that they’re taking, so we need to be speaking about this profession much earlier.”