Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions studying rising use of agency nurses

As CTV News continues to investigate the growing use of private staffing agencies to prop up B.C.'s public health-care system, a national organization of nurses is also studying the issue.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions announced Thursday that it is partnering with Queen's University on a "mixed methods study" that will investigate the growth of agency nurse use across Canada and its implications for the health-care system.

Sometimes referred to as "travel nurses," agency nurses work for private health-care staffing companies. Traditionally, they've been used in rural and remote communities in B.C. and across Canada, where they would fill-in at smaller health-care facilities to allow for vacations, medical absences and parental leave.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, B.C.'s spending on agency nurses has increased dramatically. The province spent more than seven times as much on agency nurses in the 2021-22 fiscal year as it did in 2018-19. 

CFNU president Linda Silas told CTV News nurses across Canada have reported an uptick in their health authorities' reliance on agency nurses to fill regular shifts.

One of the goals of the new study will be to quantify this phenomenon, she said.

"We have a lot of hearsay," Silas said. "The media, I have to say, has done an excellent job investigating the high cost of agency nursing."

The study will also seek to determine the reasons why nurses are taking agency work instead of full-time positions, and propose solutions for reversing the trend, according to Silas.

"They're going to casual work, they're going to agency work, because they need control over their work life," she said, summarizing the anecdotal evidence she's heard about the trend.

"They need to feel valued. And they need to know when their shift is over, their shift is over."

Dr. Joan Almost, a registered nurse and Queen's University professor, will lead the study, according to the CFNU announcement, which lists the following areas of focus:

• the number of private nursing agencies in Canada;
• the number of agency nurses being utilized;
• the average rate of pay for agency nurses;
• the total dollars spent by provincial and territorial governments on agency nurses;
• the total number of hours worked by agency nurses;
• where and how agency nurses are being used;
• key policy recommendations.

Recent CTV News Vancouver reporting has answered some of those questions for B.C., with documents acquired after a seven-month freedom of information battle showing the province paying $75.62 per hour – plus travel expenses, in some cases – to agencies for their staff members. 

A unionized, health authority worker with a designation as a registered nurse in their first 10 years on the job makes roughly $45 as their base hourly wage. 

A recent posting from a prominent staffing agency that runs travelnurse.ca posted a week-long request for a surgical nurse in the Lower Mainland offering $52.50 per hour, with “bonus incentives” and unspecified benefits. 

In B.C. and elsewhere, agency nurses receive better pay and have more schedule flexibility and better work-life balance than their counterparts in the public system. Silas said changing this dynamic will be essential to retaining and growing the full-time workforce and reducing reliance on agency nurses.

"We will always need agency nurses, but not to fill 40 per cent of your rotation," she said, providing a hypothetical example.

"When I graduated many moons ago, to get a full-time job at my local hospital was a great job," Silas said. "We need to bring that back."

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Penny Daflos