Planning for a health workforce that spans across different disciplines and across the community and long-term care sectors can pose many challenges. Speakers from the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) engaged participants in a workshop that delved into integrated health human resources planning, highlighting the importance of including a broad spectrum of health providers often overlooked in planning.
The expert panel explored the roles of key service providers within community-based home care, facility-based long-term care and informal caregiving and discussed the policy levers that influence these workforces and their implications for service delivery.
Key Insights
- Long-term care and community care have incredibly complex care teams, composed of many different professions but predominately led by nursing teams, providing care to older adults with complex care. Many of the retention issues are the same as in other sectors, but some are unique. For example, a large portion of the workforce is trained internationally, and employers need to consider how to support these staff in their transition to Canada. Personal support workers are often unregulated and the education they receive varies significantly and by region.
- Health workforce planning should be done based on community need. One example is the adaptive workforce clusters at Vancouver Coastal Health where a patient population is identified, and staff are assigned specifically to care for this population.
- The establishment of any long-term care facilities in an Indigenous community must consider trauma informed care. For Indigenous people who may have negative experiences with institutions, it’s important to have staff who can provide care based on individual needs.
Key Actions
- Support educators, regulators and funders in considering needs-based, community planning. For example, support incremental efforts rather than trying to solve everything at once.
- Increase the availability of data on the population so we understand community needs.
- Include patients, family members, nurses, physicians and other healthcare professionals in health workforce planning and considerations.
The CMA’s full report is available at: