Those who are involved in implementing a new program to embed nurses in rural Alberta are hoping it will help retain the workforce in areas where there is high staff turnover.
The University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services have launched a program that will see eight students a year work out of the Wainwright Health Centre to help train staff for rural nursing.
"We have known that there was going to be a registered nurse shortage for many years, and we also find that it’s very difficult to recruit or retain some of our health-care practitioners in rural Alberta,” said Carolyn Trumper, executive director of integrated quality management for Alberta Health Services.
The program embeds nurses in Wainwright, where they take classes virtually from the University of Calgary, and the cohort of eight learns the challenges of nursing in a rural community while they are in school. Trumper said she hopes the program leads to more staff retention, because those who are part of the program must already live in the area and are therefore more likely to stay in the area when their degree is done.
Often nurses will move out to rural communities for a few years to get experience, Trumper said, and then move back to urban centres.
Nursing in a rural community is a different experience than in an urban centre, Trumper said, as nurses are filling a complex and more general role in their workplace.
"It’s a multiple-skilled and expanded practice. You need to be very versatile. You have to be prepared for obstetrics, emergencies across many different components of the nursing practice,” Trumper said.
Nurses also need to understand how to work in a small community and enjoy the lifestyle that comes with it.
The program is a pilot, said Zahra Shajani, associate dean in the faculty of nursing at the U of C, and they will collect data as it unfolds to improve the program and see if it can be expanded.
More than 60 people inquired about the program before its launch, Shajani said, and the new program makes the nursing program accessible to people living in rural Alberta.
“When you move into the urban areas, it's expensive … to be in an urban place for four years or you know, even a chunk of your year is really expensive, and so if we can go and offer this program where the need it and they don’t need the extra expenses and the debt, I think that is also very attractive to a lot of individuals,” Shajani said.
The program had been in the works before COVID-19, Shajani said, but the pandemic expedited the process for it because the university went online and realized it could bring education outside of a traditional classroom.
“In terms of how do we expand rural and remote learning, I think because of COVID and that remote-learning environment, it forced us to fast forward so quickly, to learn about how do you continue to deliver a quality education online?” Shajani said.
But once they realized remote learning outside of the classroom was possible, they had more tools to push forward with their rural remote-learning vision, Shajani said.
The program plans to accept eight students each year to continue to provide nurses to the Wainwright area.
There has been interest from other communities across Alberta, Trumper said, but right now they are working on evaluating the pilot program and assessing before they bring it to other communities.
