This is good news.

Smoke and mirrors.

I am sure there is a lot more to the story, than what the government does as news release. The problem is the administration of services. They don’t know what to do, thus so much money is wasted in middle management trying to do the CYA policy.

Why so many As casuals in the first place? That sounds wrong to me. Shouldn’t the ones as casual be offered full time jobs first..before wasting money on any recruitment campaign ? If these casuals do fill the positions are thier casual positions still there or are those jobs no more.. Let’s see how this plays out… Hoping it’s not a shell game.

When it says 1643 new nursing “positions” does that mean 1643 FTE (full time equivalent) positions or just to hire 1643 nurses then employ them for half time (as an example) meaning it is only 821 FTE? There have been a lot of employment games played by administrations in hospitals in BC in this area in the past, not just in nursing but with other paramedical groups as well, games such as reducing full time positions to part time positions then counting them as an employee being employed without specifying that they work only half time or some other proportion of a full time job. Referring to them as an employee is very misleading because a half time employee can do no more than half of what a full time employee can do, sometimes less due to orientation at shift change, but two half time employees can be listed as two employees instead of the one that could be rederenced if it were a full time position. Then, of course, the positions can be designated as casual positions, which means reduced benefits to the employee making employment less attractive and lessening the guarantee of successfully finding someone to come in to work, since casual employees can’t be compelled to work a particular shift like a full time permanent employee can in the position. In other words, is this increase real and genuine, or is it just another piece of political propaganda which will end up making no improvements whatsoever to, as similar announcements have failed in the past.

rederenced = referenced

I guess that every announcement regardless of what it is will be met with questions?

Is this announcement a good one? I for one think that it is! After all, with all the complaining about current staffing levels, any announcement about new hiring should be welcomed!

I hope that this announcement will at least result in reduced overtime for our existing nursing staff although some nurses that I know really really like the overtime and the money that comes with it.

Assuming that each nursing position comes with a price tag of at least $100,000.00, the announcement of 1643 new positions will add over $164,000,000.00 to the provincial healthcare bill! Hopefully we will see a partial offsetting of these new costs by a reduction in our current overtime costs!

One would assume that with the Government, Union, and Health Employee’s association all involved in this, we could just accept the news release as fact. Hmmmm. Can we.????

In any event the Fraser, Interior, and Island health authorities are each hiring the largest number of nurses, 400, 300, 200 respectively.

They want to create these positions by March 31st, so we should be getting the real **skinny* by then.

A nurse shortage has been a fact for YEARS. Why all of a sudden is this being addressed?

Why all of a sudden is this being addressed? There are byelections going on.