Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do realize that I will have an opportunity to ask more detailed questions under detail, but I just want to take one more opportunity to follow up on the questions I had with the Minister on grad placement. I just want to make it clear, for the record, that I am only asking questions on the nursing grad placement, because I do have a family member from Aurora College who graduated and I don't want there to be any perception of conflict. So I just want to put that on the record.
My questions are very specific to the Stanton Hospital and the nursing grads. The Minister mentioned earlier that the department does do follow-up to see what comes out of these nurse grads and how they are placed. I think that's really important. I would like to ask the Minister if he could provide us with information as to what the department's knowledge is in terms of how successful we are in placing our grads. Just to put context to that, I want to tell the Minister about two examples I know and there are a lot of other issues that I am dealing with and I am sure other Members are dealing with in terms of recruitment and retention of health care professionals, nurses in particular. It's wide ranging. I understand once they are employed as nurses, it becomes a human resource issue and a health and social services issue.
This afternoon, I just want to concentrate on nursing grads. One nursing grad I know of, I think she's always just wanted to be a psychiatric nurse. I don't want us to get mixed up with people who want to be placed in
Yellowknife rather than wanting to go to communities. I am talking about whether or not the hospital or ECE is working closely enough with the hospital as an employer to try to accommodate as much as possible our grads. This lady graduated from nursing and I think they get placed on an internship program before they finally get placed. So she was a student nurse. When she was there, there were about two or three vacancies for psychiatric nurses. I understand if there are no positions there, a new nurse can't be expected to push somebody aside and get a job there, but there were vacancies there. Right after she started working there, she learned that at least two out of those three positions were given to somebody from down south. So there is legitimate concern for her whether or not the government is serious about placing our grads into these places if the hospital cannot even work out the vacancies so they can maximize placement of our own grads.
It turned out that by the end of the year, there were 14 students in the program at that time but there were only vacancies for six positions at the hospital. All I am trying to say is if they would have worked out the numbers coming out of the grad program and the vacancies available, they could have done a lot better than what they have been able to do, which is to put people in places...either not be able to provide a position at the hospital or put them in places where they don't feel they are trained to do or it doesn't meet their interest and such. What's happening is a lot of our northern trained nurses are leaving.
I know a couple who are both nurses and we have lost them. At some point, we are investing millions of dollars for this Nursing Program. We cannot afford to train all these nurses and then send them down south. We just can't afford to do that. I understand there is freedom of mobility and people have rights to choose wherever they want to work, but surely there is a lot more we can do to accommodate them as much as possible, at least if it requires...I don't mean five-year planning; I mean like three months, six-month planning.
The other thing is I have been in contact with a number of student nurses who are really feeling like they are being discriminated against because they are from Aurora College. They continue to see new grads, new people just being hired from the South where they feel they can do the job. It's either they are ruled out because they don't have experience or they are not feeling supported in their mentorship program. I really feel ECE has a role to play in working with the GNWT as an employer or the hospital or any other places in the North to make sure that our grads are supported. For example, they are not placed where they want to be. They are placed where they don't feel that they could show their interest. Where they want to work on different shifts, they get told they have to work in one section over another without advance notice. When they call their mentors, I don't know if the mentors are under stress and they are not equipped to train the young nurses, I have no idea, but we definitely need to review this.
So I would like to ask the Minister if he could bring forward to us some kind of a review of the Nursing Grad Program for the last...I can't remember, Mr. Chairman, forgive me but I can't remember when this program started, but maybe for the last three graduating classes and see how many of them are in the North and what sort of programs do we have for them. While we can't make them stay, we do create an environment where it's likely for them to stay.
The third thing is I would like to know if we ask any questions in advance before they get into the Nursing Program what their intentions are, not only to stay in the North. Do we ask a straightforward question? Are you willing to stay in the North for a number of years as a nurse? If you are not able to find a job in Yellowknife or if we are not able to give you a job in Yellowknife, are you willing to go to the communities? They should know upfront. If we are going end up having these nurses move away, maybe we are better off to spend that money in providing packages for our existing nurses. It does cost a lot of money to train these nurses. I think it is important for us to look at how we can enhance this program because it is the cornerstone of how we are going to deal with health care professional issues. It's been flagged as such from this government for a number of years now. I think it's time that we do evaluate this. I would like to ask the Minister if he is willing to look at that and bring it back to us.
He mentioned earlier that a lot of nurses are not able to be found. We can't even ask questions. So we can assume that they have moved away. They will be in a category as having moved away. I would like to know how many nurses have moved away in the North and for those that we can get hold of, I would like to know if we can find out the reasons why they moved. I would like to know if there is an exit interview or any kind of follow-up to see what their concerns are. Could the Minister provide me with that? Thank you.