Arnprior Hospital offering $25,000 to new nurse hires

The Arnprior Regional Hospital is offering signing bonuses of $25,000 to new nurse hires in an effort to fix their staffing shortage.

"It's a health human resource crisis right now," says the hospital's VP of Human Resources Andrea McClymont.

"We do have other positions but we only have approval for eight full-time nurses."

Currently 96 nurses work at the hospital in Arnprior. McClymont says they have 12 vacancies but only received approval to fund bonuses for eight full-time hires.

The bonuses are being provided through a grant program by Ontario Health.

McClymont says hospitals across the province are struggling to fill their staffing ranks and this is a strategy to entice nurses to work in rural communities.

"We want to be able to recruit people, and in order to be able to do that we have to be able to compete with the other hospitals who are offering these similar kinds of incentives."

ARH says they are looking to hire in their long-term care, inpatient, and emergency room departments.

To be eligible, the new hires must commit to working full-time in Arnprior for at least two years, not have been employed as a nurse in Ontario in the previous six months, start no later than March 31, 2024, hold a certificate in good standing from the College of Nurses Ontario, and not be receiving funding from the Ministry of Health for the Tuition Support Program for Nurses.

The Ontario Nurses’ Association says the average starting salary for nursing graduates is between $50,000 and $70,000. But even a signing bonus of $25,000 might not be enough to convince them to work in Arnprior.

"When Arnprior is desperately trying to attract nurses and offering this $25,000 for two years of service, but yet every hospital from the GTA is starting to do the exact same thing, who's going to win," says DJ Sanderson, a nurse and regional vice-president with the ONA.

Sanderson says the signing bonuses are a slap in the face to currently employed nurses who have worked through the pandemic and are leaving the field due to inadequate compensation.

"It's really tough," he tells CTV News. "I feel bad for a lot of these hospitals that are trying to do what they can. But without the proper support from this Ford government it's a fool’s errand."