Pandemic exposing critical gaps in health workforce planning

Health workers in Canada experience endemic levels of burnout directly related to understaffing and work overload. Leaves of absence from work for mental health and stress related issues are 1.5 times higher among health workers than the rest of the population. Increasingly, health workers are significantly reducing their hours worked, just to cope, or leaving their jobs altogether. That was before the pandemic. With COVID-19, we are witnessing levels of stress, overload and burnout among health workers previously unimaginable. Downstream responses of mindfulness and free access to psychotherapy, albeit helpful, are at best band-aid solutions. We have to look upstream to the source of the crisis. Health worker burnout is directly linked to poor health workforce planning. That we continue to operate our health system blindfolded to very basic data about our systems key resource—its health workers—is remarkable. Canada lacks the data on our health workforce necessary to make long overdue changes to address burnout. Photograph courtesy of Pixabay Health workers account for more than 10 per cent of all employed Canadians and over two-thirds of all health care spending, not including the personal and public costs for their training. This amounts to $175-billion (2019) or nearly eight per cent of Canada’s total GDP. Health workforce science—and the data research infrastructure necessary to support it—is critical to making the best decisions about this essential human resource. We need to advance health workforce science in Canada now. Canada lags behind comparable OECD countries, including the U.K., Australia and the U.S. on big data analytics and a digital research infrastructure that would give us vital information for health workforce planning. Significant gaps in our knowledge have caused serious systemic risks for planners to manage during this health crisis. Absent timely and relevant health workforce data, decision-makers cannot optimally deploy health workers to where, when and how they are most needed. As a result, health workforce planning activities across Canada remain ad hoc, sporadic and siloed, generating significant costs and inefficiencies. The consequences include everything from sub-optimal health workforce utilization and poor population health outcomes to health worker burnout. What data do we have? The data we have are profession-specific and say little about how health workers function as teams in ‘real world’ patient care pathways. The data are also collected differently by various stakeholders, so are not easy to analyze across jurisdictions. Notable absences are workers in older adult care and mental health care—two sectors heavily impacted by the pandemic. What we need are a standard set of data across a broader range of health workers in support of inter-professional and inter-jurisdictional planning. Ideally these data would be collected uniformly, include diversity (racial, Indigenous and more inclusive gender identity), and address practice characteristics (e.g., setting, scope and service capacity). These data should also be linked to relevant patient information, including healthcare utilization and outcome data. Robust data would allow us to better understand the range and characteristics of health workers caring for patients, the types of care they provide and the outcomes experienced by patients. Right now, we are making decisions in the dark, without using essential data that most other developed nations have had for years. So how do we get there? Canada needs a more robust and centrally coordinated health workforce data, analytics and science infrastructure. This would address a critical gap that has held us back, and which has become only more apparent, since COVID-19. The Brewer Park COVID-19 assessment centre in Ottawa on Aug. 6, 2020. The workforce burnout issue was a problem before COVID, and the pandemic has only made it worse. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade We can’t claim to have been blindsided. Already in 2010, the parliamentary standing committee recommended a designated health workforce agency, and this call was endorsed across all parties and by several stakeholder organizations that provided testimony to the committee. Since then, almost nothing has happened on this front. The absence of central coordination and implementation of integrated health workforce data, analytics and planning activities, combined with diffuse governance responsibilities inherent in a federated health system leave us with blurred lines of responsibility and poorly coordinated efforts. Other countries have managed to overcome these challenges. Now that the pandemic has made the need crystal clear, Canada no longer has any excuse. The federal ministers of health, labour, and innovation need to make the health workforce data infrastructure a top priority. The pandemic may be the impetus that enables us to make necessary significant advances in health workforce data infrastructure. We need to stop simply clapping our hands in support of health workers—and start planning to create better workforce conditions for them. Let’s make improved health workforce science in Canada a key legacy in support of our health care workers. Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault is a professor of sociological and anthropological studies at the University of Ottawa and the lead of the Canadian Health Workforce Network. The Hill Times

Pandemic exposing critical gaps in health workforce planning

Burnout was far too common in the healthcare workforce before the pandemic. COVID-19 has made it much worse. Poor health workforce planning is to blame.

Time for a shift: Canada must treat Alzheimer’s like other progressive diseases

Between wars and fears of fascism in the U.S., there’s plenty to be scared about

Poilievre can’t just ‘cat-call from the periphery’: Tom McElroy

The problem of political homelessness

Liberals have fumbled green energy transition, and Conservatives have zero interest

Trump alienates women and Puerto Rican voters

Fixing health system flaws requires better data sharing and workforce strategies, say health-care experts

Time to fix the inequity in Canadian research council grants

Canada needs urgent solutions to address burnout among health-care workers

Here are some changes that could help turn the mental health crisis in Canada around

Nurse retention crisis requires action plan to address workplace violence, says nursing organizations

News

Get free news updates

Opinion

Submit a guest opinion article

resources

Advertise

subscribe

get help

Pandemic exposing critical gaps in health workforce planning

Burnout was far too common in the healthcare workforce before the pandemic. COVID-19 has made it much worse. Poor health workforce planning is to blame.

Get The Policy Briefings Newsletter