{"id":900112,"date":"2026-09-18T06:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T06:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900112\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T06:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T06:20:16","slug":"health-p-e-i-s-use-of-some-travel-health-care-workers-will-end-starting-in-march-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900112\/","title":{"rendered":"Health P.E.I.’s use of some travel health-care workers will end starting in March next year"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

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Health P.E.I. will no longer be using some travel health-care workers starting in early 2027.<\/p>\n

The Union of Public Sector Employees (UPSE)said it has heard complaints for years from its members about travel nurses doing the same work as its members, but for more money. <\/p>\n

The union filed a grievance about the use of travel licensed practical nurses in 2022. The arbitrator told Health P.E.I. to cease its use of travel LPNs who do the same work as UPSE employees by this fall.<\/p>\n

After talks with Health P.E.I.’s leadership, provincial UPSE president Karen Jackson said, another deal extended that deadline to March 31.<\/p>\n

\"AKaren Jackson, president of the P.E.I. Union of Public Sector Employees, says the practice of using agency staff is unsustainable and she would prefer to see that money invested in the public system. (Aaron Adetuyi\/CBC)<\/p>\n

“It did just include the LPNs [working] in long-term care. However, the \u2026 acting CEO, reached out to me and said it would have detrimental effects on the health-care system if they had to pull these agency staff out of the institutes,” Jackson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We started discussions and we came to a resolve.”<\/p>\n

The change means Health P.E.I. can’t use travel staff to do the work of UPSE’s licensed practical nurses, resident-care workers and patient-care workers across the system.<\/p>\n

Travel workers come from outside P.E.I. and are hired by a private agency to fill vacancies on a temporary basis, usually at a higher pay rate than most salaried staff hired by the province.<\/p>\n

Jackson said the practice of using agency staff is unsustainable and she would prefer to see that money invested into public health care.<\/p>\n

She called the move “a good agreement against privatization” that will ultimately save taxpayers money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The deal applies to UPSE members, meaning travel registered nurses will still be used.<\/p>\n

‘A clear effect on morale’<\/p>\n

An auditor general’s report released earlier this year<\/a> said Health P.E.I. spent about $28.5 million on unbudgeted travel nurses in the 2024-25 fiscal year.<\/p>\n

“It had a clear effect on morale. It was not good. Poor morale increased for sure in all the health-care areas that they’re using these folks,” Jackson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If you’re working side by side and you know somebody’s doing the same work and getting paid three times more, it doesn’t feel very good and they didn’t feel very respected.”<\/p>\n

Corinne Rowswell, the chief operating officer with Health P.E.I., said the change will apply to about 44 positions.<\/p>\n

She said Health P.E.I. has been making efforts to reduce its reliance on agency staff.<\/p>\n

\"AHealth P.E.I.’s deal with UPSE applied to the union’s members, meaning travel nurses will still be hired to fill temporary vacancies in the public health-care system. (Aaron Adetuyi\/CBC)<\/p>\n

“These agency staff have provided valuable inputs for us and have enabled us to meet the demand, incur the growth that we’ve been seeing and ensure that we are maintaining that safe staffing,” Rowswell said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve created a number of initiatives that have enabled us to see an increase in our hiring \u2026 and so we’re really hopeful that that’s going to continue to occur.”<\/p>\n

Rowswell said work is taking place to recruit and onboard staff as they become available.<\/p>\n

“We’re doing a program review, as well, to optimize the staff that we do have,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We’re really working hard to ensure that people are working to their full scope.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-900112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}