Big cash retention for incoming nurses.
The province announced that $763 million is being made available to use when hiring new nursing staff as a retention payment.
It’s temporary funding to help secure more nursing staff across the province, but on-boarding fulltime workers will get $5,000 and eligible part-time nurses can receive a prorated $5,000.
The payment will be handed out over two installments by the employer.
New hospital, long-term care & retirement homes, home/community care as well as primary, mental health and emergency services or corrections nurses are included in the eligible fields for the retention payment as well as many other community based services that use registered nurses.
Ontario is also working with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) to deploy internationally trained nurses to hospitals and other health care settings as well as getting nursing students training in the field sooner.
This comes as the Ontario Nurses Association and others have been battling against the province to repeal Bill 124; which limits registered nurses, nurse practitioners, and health-care professionals wage increases to a maximum of one per cent total compensation for three years.