The President of the Registered Nurses Union is optimistic that some relief is coming to address staffing shortages affecting nurses and the health care system as a whole.

Yvette Coffey says there are currently 600 nursing vacancies in the province, with many more nurses in need of a break following the marathon pandemic response when many vacations were deferred.

Coffey says government appears to be listening and she’s hopeful that new initiatives are coming in the not-too-distant future to address nursing vacancies both in the short, and long term.

She says they expect that an announcement is coming to improve the workplace for nurses and nurse practitioners in the short term. “We’ve got to give people time off” says Coffey, “we can’t keep going the way we are.”