For Immediate Release
November 8, 2024
NL NDP Leader Jim Dinn (St. John’s Centre) says it’s time for the government to stop hiding the issues, denying their failures, and misleading the public on the realities facing our healthcare system.
The Registered Nurses Union revealed today that out of 121 graduate nursing students at the Centre for Nursing Studies, only three received job offers. Dinn is appalled, and says government should stop prioritizing flashy infrastructure announcements and instead listen to our public healthcare workers and take some meaningful action.
“It is inconceivable that only three of the 121 graduates ready and eager to work in the public system that needs them so desperately were offered positions. When much-needed healthcare workers are ready for employment, we must be there with them, doing everything possible to ensure they have the jobs they want,” said Dinn. “The fact that government isn’t in an ongoing conversation with students, working with them to ensure they have full-time positions in our public system, is unfathomable.”
Dinn challenges the government to be transparent and stop misleading the public with meaningless statements on progress in recruitment and retention.
“Both the current and former Ministers of Health have said that nursing students are all being offered jobs upon finishing their program, but we continue to hear from nursing students that this is not their experience. Government gives numbers of recruited workers with no context, no idea of those who have left, and whether recruited nurses are actually working right now. They continue to hide the problem,” he said.
Dinn says it’s almost like government is deliberately diminishing the system’s capacity. “Why else aren’t they doing their due diligence, taking the basic and obvious step to ensure that our students know that they are wanted in our public system as soon as they are ready? It is shameful for this government to say they are focused on recruitment and retention while failing nursing students and paying $100 million dollars of tax dollars on private travel nurses, he said.
“Nursing graduates shouldn’t have to speak up to be heard. This government should be there ready to listen and ready to act. Clearly, they are not.”
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For further information, contact Stephanie Curran, Media and Communications Officer, NDP Caucus at 330-0328 (o), or stephaniecurran@gov.nl.ca
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