John is a system planner  

As a planner in his jurisdiction’s health workforce unit, John wants to understand what’s driving a decline in the number of licensed practical nurses (LPNs) working in long-term care in his province. He suspects an issue with the pipeline of nurse graduates into direct care roles in long-term care (LTC) and challenges in retaining nurses in the sector. John wonders if other jurisdictions are experiencing similar challenges. 

4 ways the dashboards can help John 

• From the Provider Profile dashboard’s menu, he selects his province and licensed practical nurses to get a bird’s eye view of how LPNs have been distributed across health care settings in the past.  

• He compares his province to others hoping to identify jurisdictions where there may be promising policies that might work in his province. 

• From the Recruitment & Retention dashboard, he can get a closer look at the flow of LPNs into and out of his jurisdiction. He can compare the in-out ratio to that in neighbouring areas and see what proportion of recent LPN graduates are registering to practice elsewhere. 

• From the Policy Tracker, John is given a summary of the number of recruitment and retention policies recently implemented in each jurisdiction he selects. He drills down on each policy to find when they were implemented, by whom, and which health professions were impacted as a result.
  
  

5 things John learned 

• The number of LPNs working in LTC has been slowly decreasing, and at the same time the number of LPNs working in community health and other sectors has been slowly increasing, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.  

• While many jurisdictions have seen a similar increase in LPNs working in community settings, not all of them have had a decline in the number working in LTC.  

• The overall ratio of LPNs entering and exiting the profession has been relatively stable over the last few years, suggesting part of the challenge in his jurisdiction is retention specific to LTC. 

• About a quarter of recent LPN graduates in John’s jurisdiction registered to practice elsewhere, some in small neighbouring provinces but most in a large province with more job opportunities. 

• Not all provinces in John’s region are experiencing challenges in recruiting or retaining LPNs in LTC. The policy tracker revealed incentives such as higher hourly rates and retention bonuses have been implemented in neighbouring jurisdictions and may have been a factor in improved retention rates amongst recent LPN graduates in these areas.
  
  

What will John and his team do with this information 

• Conduct more targeted analysis into what’s driving the shift from the LPN workforce out of LTC and into other sectors. 

• Perform a deeper search into information on what LTC related competencies are included in his jurisdiction’s LPN education programs. 

• Investigate what talent gaps have resulted in this jurisdiction’s LTC facilities.  

• Assemble data on the LPN vacancies in this jurisdiction’s LTC facilities and the wages and any incentives being offered to fill them.  

• Consider opportunities to implement some of the incentive programs that have had success in other jurisdictions.