Nurse recruiting obstacle disappoints health minister PROVINCIAL HEALTH planning minister Sindi Hawkins is disappointed the B.C, Nurses’ Union ~won’t approve work per- mits for foreign trained “nurses to come to B.C. “Nurses are telling us they need help in the OR, ER and ICUs (intensive care units)-so we need to: go and recruit offshore,” said Hawkins last week. The nurses’ union with- drew its approval for the granting of one-year work permits earlier this year in response to layoffs in the south, It says thal as long as there are laid off nurses in B.C., foreign-trained ones shouldn’t be recruited to, come to B.C. The edict is expected to particularly hurt in more tural and remote locations in B.C. where it has been difficult to recruit nurses from the south. Foreign-trained nurses offered ane way of helping to ease that shortage in rural.and remote places. Hawkins said her offi- cials are working on ways to overcome the union’s no-visa rule, The situation has Mills Memorial Hospital nursing director Marg Petrick wor- ried about the effect in Nurse imports did slow down A ROADBLOCK to re- cruiting nurses from over seas is slowing being over- come, says federal official, There had been fears afhe | abitity-tebring- ‘ins for- figii “nurses on ‘one-year: work permits to fill vacan- cies had been all but stop- ped when the B.C. Nurses’ Union (BCNU) stopped co-operating with federal officials. Tom. Steele of Human Resources Development Canada said the BCNU was used to as an informa- tion source to verify that foreign-trained. nurses werén’t filling positions at the expense of Canadian ones, “The BCNU was vali- dating the vast majority of the requests to bring in for- eign nurses,” said Steele. “What we watld do is validate them and send them to immigration and il was then up te immigra- tion lo issue the permit or not,” he said. But when health author- ities down south began laying off nurses earlier this year because of bud- get cuts, the BCNU stop- ped taking part in the visa program. It said it wouldn’t go along: with work visas while Canadian nurses were out of work. That left Steele and other federal officials tem- porarily without an infor- mation network to check on nurse poslings and va-— cancy situations. “It became much more complicated,” said Steele, “We had to look at each case on a case by case basis. We had to ask ques- tions: we haven’t had to ask in the past.” Before the BCNU with- drew from the program, federal officials had been, ° at times, able to validate a job in one day. “The cases are. moving,. but not as fast as they used to," said Steele in adding. a whole new information is: being put together, . Steele