The Caring for Canadians: Canada’s Future Health Workforce study released today highlights the urgency to better plan for the country’s health workforce needs with improved data, modelling and scenario-planning.
Caring for Canadians, which included participation from Health Workforce Canada, projects an increase in shortages of family physicians, registered nurses and pharmacists over the next 10 years. It also points to the lack of representation of Indigenous peoples in the health workforce in this country. In addition, the study indicates the need to enhance the connection between education and health workforce supply data to support health workforce modelling and forecasting for the future. Building on our already publicly available data and information dashboards, Health Workforce Canada will continue to assist with advancing this work.
Canada requires nation-wide health workforce modelling tools to better support health workforce planning that will meet the needs of everyone across the country. As a newly created organization, Health Workforce Canada has begun work, with partners, to solve common challenges in health workforce modelling at the local, regional, and national levels, including harmonizing standards, data, definitions, and methodologies. We are committed to collaborating with others focused on health workforce issues, and building the tools and capacity to better model and plan to help meet the needs of Canadians.