Call to Action - Help our Healthcare Heroes Now!

February 7, 2023 - Prime Minister of Canada announces funding for the creation of a Centre of Excellence on Health Workforce Data 

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 Watch the Background Videos to the Call to Action 

    Read the Health Workforce in Canada Fact Sheet

  Read the HHR Infographic-Final ENFR 

A call to action for better planning, better care and better work through better data  

Canada’s health workers have been here for all of us throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It is time for us to be there for them.  We call on the Government of Canada to support health workers by making significant and immediate investments to enhance the data infrastructure that provinces, territories, regions and training programs need to better plan for and support the health workforce.

We the following researchers, educators, associations, health care unions and network members, are united in expressing our gratitude to Canada’s health workers. We are also gravely concerned about their health and the future of health care in Canada.

Although COVID-19 has heightened our concerns, many health workforce planning issues predate the pandemic. COVID-19 has sharply exposed a lack of clear answers to the most basic questions about Canada’s health workers. What do we know about them? How well do they reflect the diversity of Canada, in terms of Indigenous or racial identity and language of service? What do we know about the scope of their work? How do and can they work together? How can they be recruited, trained and retained where they are most needed? In some critical sectors, such as home care, long-term care and mental health care, we don’t even know how many workers there are.

Pre-pandemic, we knew the health workforce was overstretched and that there was growing concern about accessing timely care close to home. Long wait times are largely caused by shortages of health workers.

The pandemic has exacerbated critical staffing shortages causing excessive workloads; these are a direct result of inadequate planning.  Health workers are carrying an enormous mental health burden, for which we risk unprecedented attrition from the health workforce. This will inevitably lead to less access to safe, high- quality care and increased wait times for patients.

Safe, high- quality care for patients is intricately tied to safe, high- quality work for health workers.

Until barriers to effective health workforce planning are addressed through better and more accessible health workforce data, we can expect inadequate planning for population needs now and into the future, inefficient deployment of health workers, persistent maldistribution of services, and a perpetuation of current inequities.

We can do better.

The time is now for Canada to take the lead in supporting provinces, territories, regions and training programs with enhanced and inclusive data and decision-making tools. These tools are needed to make informed staffing decisions, to optimize contributions of the available workforce, and to enable safer workplaces.

Without essential health workforce data, we will continue to make decisions in the dark, with incomplete, misleading and non-standardized information that is disconnected from the real-world experience of those at the point of care. 

Improved health system planning through better health workforce data can make a world of difference for health workers and the Canadian public.

Please add your name to our Call for Action at https://forms.gle/se7fFVsWKGgnuGQFA

Signatories

On behalf of an organization (in alphabetical order)

On behalf of an individual (in alphabetical order)

Please add your name to our Call for Action at https://forms.gle/se7fFVsWKGgnuGQFA