The Government of Saskatchewan says a delegation to Manila, Philippines left Friday. It’s a five-day mission to promote Saskatchewan’s health care employment opportunities.
Minister Merriman will lead the delegation and will be joined by government officials and representatives from the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Saskatchewan’s two universities and Saskatchewan Polytechnic. Post-secondary institutions will work on curriculum, alignment of nurse training programs and the development of pathways to fast-track Filipino health sciences graduates into the Saskatchewan labour market.
There will be a series of information sessions for hundreds of Filipino health care workers which will give them information about things like licensing and regulatory process, immigration process, and relocation supports. The Saskatchewan Health Authority will conduct in-person interviews with the goal of extending conditional job offers to qualified candidates.
An interactive web page dedicated to this effort has already resulted in about 3,000 applications have been received for information sessions and over 1600 registrations have been confirmed to attend the information sessions.
Twenty offers have been extended by the SHA to candidates from the Philippines for Continuing Care Assistant positions and two for Medical Lab Assistant positions, 70 Registered Nurse (RN) candidates from the Philippines have begun the process to join Saskatchewan’s workforce. An additional 40 Filipino applicants are working through the process. In addition to the Filipino workforce, four Ukrainian newcomers have been hired into the health care workforce. The SHA has interviewed and provided conditional letters of offers to six internationally trained nurses (IENs) already in Saskatchewan who commenced the bridging program mid-November.
Four health care workers have been awarded incentive packages of up to $50,000 over three years for a return-of-service agreement in Meadow Lake, Wilkie, Kamsack and Weyburn. This is part of the Rural and Remote Recruitment Incentive that aims to attract new employees to targeted positions in rural and remote areas. The Ministry of Health has approved 111 Clinical Placement Bursaries for students in an eligible health discipline between April and November 2022.
Sixty-six positions have been staffed and 64 positions are in the hiring process, as well, Watrous, Kipling and Big River have been added to the list of eligible locations. There are now a total of 50 rural and remote locations targeted for additional staffing.
