British Columbia provides $30K bonuses to entice and keep nurses

“The British Columbia government is offering extra rewards to attract new nurses to the province. Nurses who are willing to work in the north will get the highest bonuses.

Nurses can get $30,000 for working for at least two years in the northern parts of the province, or $20,000 for working in other rural and faraway places.

Even in big cities, nurses who apply for jobs that are hard to fill or in high demand could get bonuses as high as $15,000.

The government will give $15,000 to nurses who work for two years in the GoHealth BC travel nurse program.

Health Minister Adrian Dix revealed the rewards at a press conference on Friday. He also talked about other ways the government is trying to solve the problem of not having enough nurses in the province.

“Dix said we need to practice more. ” “We need more ways for nurses trained in other countries to work here, and we’re working on making that happen. ”

One part of the plan is to make the Provincial Rural Retention Incentive bigger. Nurses can make up to $8,000 a year if they choose to work in one of 63 communities that qualify for the program.

Also, the government is getting ready to put in place rules about how many nurses there must be for each patient in different places where people get medical care.

This means there is one nurse for every four patients in regular hospital units, one nurse for every three patients in palliative care, and one nurse for every patient in intensive care.

British Columbia is starting to use ratios like Australia and California. “will be the first place in Canada to do it. ”

“Having enough nurses for each patient not only benefits the patients, but also helps the nurses,” stated Adriane Grear, who is the president of the BC Nurses’ Union. “But they help get new employees, keep them, and I think other places will copy what we’re doing. ” What we are doing here is very important for history. What we are doing here shows our beliefs about health-care workplaces.

New benefits have been added for people who are learning to become nurses in B.C. This means that students studying Nursing or Psychiatric Nursing can get $2,000 off their tuition fees each year. Indigenous students in a BSN program can get an extra $5,000 off their tuition.

The province will spend $237. 6-million on hiring, keeping, and training employees.