CANADA IMMIGRATION

WHY ARE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS LEAVING CANADA?

Some healthcare professionals don’t find Canada attractive for reasons including compensation and wage differences across jurisdictions and differences in scope of practice and professional autonomy. Image credit: NEWS CANADA.

Posted on Signal 49, the report Retention in Healthcare: Migration Costs and System Perspectives details the costs of migration on Canadian health workforce.

In their report Alice Craft, Aranie Vijayaratnam, Bambi Tinuoye, Christopher Viel, Eddy Nason and Stein Monteiro write that “The movement of health professionals within Canada and internationally has measurable implications for health system capacity, workforce planning, and public investment.”

What factors drive health workers’ decisions to migrate? When health professionals leave the country, what are the immediate costs related to their loss and how are these compounded by the loss of public investment in their education and training? What needs to be done to retain health workers in Canada?

Common drivers of workforce movement include:

• Compensation and wage differences across jurisdictions.

• Differences in scope of practice and professional autonomy.

• Availability of stable, full-time employment.

• Workplace culture, including burnout, workload pressure, bullying, and personal safety.

• Demand for flexibility among newer generation of healthcare workers.

The full report including key recommendations for policymakers, employers, regulators, and educational institutions at Signal49.ca.