by Nash Alonto
Nov. 30, 2023
Nicole Salazar started studying Medical Support Services at Holland College in Charlottetown in the fall of 2022.
Salazar chose to study in P.E.I. because it’s affordable to study.
When Salazar first arrived on the Island, she heard there was a shortage of medical personnel.
“Why would I go far? Since I'm going to graduate here, I'm going to work here, because we like the (peaceful) environment here (on the Island), as well as the (sense of) community that is already here,” she said in Tagalog.
Every year, thousands of healthcare-related graduates from the Philippines decide to pack up and travel abroad; mostly nurses and caregivers, according to the Philippine government. Reasons for this phenomenon include low salaries, working conditions in hospitals across the Philippines, and limited opportunities for growth in their respective careers. The COVID-19 pandemic last year exacerbated the situation.
Here in Canada, where recruitment has been going on since the 1960s, it’s no different. Since then, many provinces and territories have implemented programs to attract foreign, especially Filipino, healthcare workers into their medical facilities due to shortages in personnel.
Provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where large Filipino communities are concentrated, have been active in recruiting healthcare workers through trade missions, licensed recruitment agencies, and social media, offering five to six figure annual salaries and other incentives. P.E.I.’s doesn't specifically target the Philippines for recruitment, but has been making steps towards it, nonetheless.
“Our primary focus for healthcare recruitment is Canada first, with limited international recruitment, including missions to Dubai and Singapore. These missions, apparently, were successful in recruiting 20 internationally educated nurses (IENs) from the Philippines,” according to Health P.E.I., in an email statement.
“Health P.E.I. is careful to follow guidelines from the WHO in regard to recruiting of healthcare workers from locations with vulnerable populations.”
Health P.E.I. has also done recruitment in trade missions, schools and on social media. They also offer recruitment incentives, as well as recruitment referral incentives.
“Investments in internally include the development of the first people strategy, expansion of talent acquisition teams in Health P.E.I., process changes to improve hiring processes (central pool) and candidate experience,” they said.
Jason Lee, the vice-chair of the P.E.I. Association of Nursing Homes, said the Philippines is among the top three or four countries where healthcare workers originate, though they might be recruited from other countries where they are based.
Lee said they also recruit healthcare workers from the Philippine privately through licensed recruitment agencies.
“We have actually recruited most of our international staff internally. We have a number of our managers, who have actually come to Canada through their own immigration, and have an interest in helping others to come,” he said.
“In the beginning, it sort-of started with some of our current staff helping us recruit some of their friends, some of their family. We’ve gone beyond that now, where we’re now going to other countries through government-planned human-resource trade missions, so we go with the (provincial) government to these different hiring and recruiting sessions, and with the help of government, they help sort-of gather up resumes, we do all the interviewing and vetting of the candidates, and we recruit through a lot of international events now.”
Although not directly, Lee said the association has a good relationship with Holland College. He said the college is well-aware of the needs of the healthcare industry on the Island and they’re trying to help solve the need for more trained international healthcare workers.
“For example, they’ve increased the number of RCWs (resident care workers) that they currently educate at Holland College every year. They’ve also increased the number of LPNs (licensed practical nurses) that they educate every year at Holland College. So that creates more supply because we have demand. We need those people, we have jobs for those people to fill, and we rely on Holland College to train those people,” he said.
After graduation, Salazar plans to apply for work at a hospital on the Island. Afterwards, she hopes she would be able to apply for a post-graduate working permit in order for her to then apply for permanent residency.
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