Southern Health hopes hundreds of students choose to stay

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This article was published 26/11/2023 (813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There were 558 students taking practicums in Southern Health this year, and human resources is hard at work convincing them to stay.

Those include students training to become nurses, nurse practitioners, paramedics, health care aides, health information services, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists.

Those taking their Bachelor of Nursing or Licensed Practical Nursing made up 59 percent, or 329 students.

“They are making a significant number of the practicums, which is good. We need them,” said Jennifer Frey, regional lead for human resources at Southern Health.

That is up from last year, when 492 students came through for practicums, with 220 or 45 percent of those for Registered Nurse or Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs).

And it is looking like even more students will be in Southern Health ambulances, hospitals and clinics in 2024. As of last week, 372 practicum applications already came through.

“So if we continue on track, we’re looking at a significantly higher number of practicums,” said Frey.

She said the high number of practicums are due to catching up post-pandemic, and a high number of courses offered at rural schools. One example is the partnership between Assiniboine Community College and Providence University College in Otterburne that has trained LPNs the last few years.

Red River College in Southport near Portage la Prairie is now taking in 25 students every year instead of every second year, doubling the number of LPNs being trained.

“These programs are very important to have offered for our employees to upgrade or for people in the community because if it’s a matter of needing to travel to Winnipeg for education, that might be a barrier for some. Having it more local definitely increases the number of rural people who would be interested in taking it,” said Frey.

“And then with the practicums being in our facilities, it’s definitely a way for us to recruit. A lot of people taking practicums, we’re able to offer them positions after. And then they get to know the site, the program and the different types of practicums they get to do. They might get to sample a few different sites and find out where they might like to work the best,” added Frey.

She described the practicums as invaluable.

“Even the last few years with the nursing shortage, some of the programs that have been running they hired nurses to run their program. And they’ve had difficulty recruiting nurses just like we have, but for the training programs. And so we’ve had to take a hard look and to help these institutions offer these programs, and to make sure they can get nurses in to do that,” said Frey.

Southern Health also successfully recruited a large number of nurses from the Philippines, though Frey said she could not give specific numbers because of an election media blackout that was still not lifted as of last week. She did say that they were headed for Portage and Morden, but not the Steinbach area yet.

Recruiting nurses and doctors is about more than just offering jobs when there are so many positions to fill. In the fall, physicians came to an event held in Steinbach this fall where the benefits of a family-friendly community with new facilities were being sold.

“We’ve been building up our human resources team particularly in recruitment, recognizing the new needs that are there. We’ve got that fresh energy looking at different approaches instead of just sticking with what’s already worked in previous years,” said Frey.

“Recruitment is a huge effort and (gets) huge attention from us right now,” she added.