Canadian Armed Forces | A discreet shortage of nursing staff

(Montreal) The shortage of health personnel does not only affect clinics and hospitals, but also the Canadian Armed Forces. Of the 439 positions in the military medical and dental fields in Quebec, approximately 150 are currently vacant.

This is explained in particular by the fact that the labor pool is the same as elsewhere in the health network, both private and public.

“Many positions that our units have been patiently waiting for have just been approved,” Alicia Gagnon, spokesperson for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), said in an email. Aside from this consideration, there is also the issue of contractors filling certain vacancies until they can be appropriately filled. »

Lieutenant-Colonel Alain Miclette, regional chief medical officer Joint Operational Force (East), explained that the Armed Forces favor a concept of multidisciplinary approach and the versatility of medical personnel.

“Health is a vocation,” he emphasized in an interview with The Canadian Press in October. We have aging populations in the country, so the demand for care providers, both at the level of practical nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, is increasing more and more and this is the same pool from which we are recruiting. »

D^r Miclette estimates that there are roughly 3,000 health care workers within the Armed Forces to take care of the care of 60,000 people in the regular force as well as 25,000 reservists across the country. “It’s like a scattered city,” he illustrates.

“That being said, when you have a military position that cannot be filled, there is a contractor who helps recruit doctors, nurses, clinicians, healthcare personnel on temporary contracts to fill the empty positions so that continuity of care can take place,” explains the chief physician.

Not always on the battlefield

There are 19 health services occupations within the CAF. Healthcare staff members have certain skills and training that are not required in the provincial and territorial health network.

For example, all military healthcare providers must be able to “shoot, move, communicate, and survive in the environment in which they provide care.” They must also know how to work with protective equipment such as a gas mask to protect against chemical warfare agents. In intensive care, staff must have skills in handling victims of explosions or chemical warfare agents.

But the daily life of healthcare workers does not generally take place in a hostile environment. CAF members receive care comparable to that provided to civilians, although some care is tailored to their military role.

“One of the big differences between what the population thinks and what happens in reality is that we are not in a permanent war routine,” argued D^r Miclette.

He indicated that the majority of health personnel work in garrison on military bases in Canada, which resemble large medical clinics.

Larger bases have services integrated into the clinic, such as radiology and laboratory services. “The bulk of the clinical part of garrison care is like a family medicine clinic. It’s seeing the little everyday ailments, chronic illnesses and all that,” summarizes D^r Miclette.

“Our model is based on being a little autonomous and independent so as not to have to put pressure on the public system, but we still have to deal with the public system for certain services given that having magnetic resonance machines in all the Canadian bases would be extremely expensive and we would not use many of them compared to the needs we have,” explains D^r Miclette.

One of the little-known roles of FAC medical teams is their participation in efforts to combat epidemics. For example, in late 2014 and 2015, members of the Armed Forces helped fight the Ebola outbreak in the West African country of Sierra Leone.

D^r Miclette also spoke about floods in Honduras, a tsunami in the Philippines, earthquakes in Turkey and Nepal, to name a few. “We have a Canadian disaster response team whose mandate is to respond to humanitarian crises when they occur. […] These are people who are trained to leave at short notice to support local populations,” he says.

Military personnel are currently deployed across the globe, primarily for surveillance, indirect support and training.

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