Addressing provider turnover to improve health outcomes in Nunavut – CMAJ

April 01, 2019

KEY POINTS

Nunavut’s health care system relies heavily on short-term locum providers, many of whom come from outside the territory.
Accumulating data from other jurisdictions highlight the negative impacts of high turnover of providers on the quality of care, including the difficulty of ensuring culturally competent care.
Strategies to develop a local or Indigenous workforce, train and hire Inuit or Northern nurses and physicians who would be more likely to stay long term in the territory, retain committed non-Inuit physicians who regularly return to or live in Nunavut, and offer adequate health system and cultural orientation to all health care professionals working in the territory would go a long way toward improving the situation.