For every 100 nurses under the age of 35 who started in New Brunswick in 2023, there were 62 other young nurses who left, according to a new report by an independent public-policy think tank.
New Brunswick had the second worst retention of young nurses in the country, the Montreal Economic Institute, known as MEI, found.
Only Newfoundland and Labrador lost young nurses at a faster rate, with 98 leaving the workforce for every 100 who joined. This was likely in part due to the end of many short-term travel nurse contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic, says the report titled The Evolution of the Nursing Supply in Canada.
The national average was 40, based on the latest registration data available from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, collected from provincial and territorial regulatory bodies.
Emmanuelle Faubert, an economist at the institute, wrote the report in collaboration with research intern Olivia Martiskainen.
Faubert said the “exodus” of young nurses is concerning because it adds to the shortage of health-care workers and puts more pressure on an already-strained health-care system.
Heavier workloads fall on the nurses who do stay “and so you end up with a lot of nurses burning out,” Faubert said.
MEI economist Emmanuelle Faubert, the report’s author, says there needs to be a complete reversal in the exodus of nurses ‘if we want to maintain [a] health-care system that works and is able to treat patients.’ (Submitted by MEI)
“You cannot expect a burnt-out nurse to provide the same quality of care simply because it’s physically not possible,” she said.
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