By Cheryl Jahn

Northern Health recruitment efforts full steam ahead

Jan 4, 2024 | 1:14 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The list of external job postings for Northern Health is lengthy and challenging for the health provider, and the recruitment efforts never end.

“We continue to struggle to fill registered nurse positions as well as allied health positions, and there’s a number of professions that fall under allied health, including occupational therapists and physiotherapists,” explains Emelye Macfarlane, Regional Manager of Recruitment for Northern Health. “So we continue to maintain a 20 percent vacancy rate, which we are quite happy with. The fact that we continue to maintain that level. But we do want to see that level decrease over the next year.”

Northern Health’s footprint is 600,000 square kilometers in size, roughly the size of France, with a number of smaller satellite communities peppered across the health authority. That poses one of the largest challenges.

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“It can be dependent on the profession. However, what we are finding the most challenging right now is our smaller rural communities. For example, we’ve got some challenges in Kitimat, we have some challenges and the Northeast in Fort Saint John, Dawson’s Creek, and we continue to experience challenges in very rural communities such as Fort St. James.”

Enter the post-secondary institutions scattered across the region with expedited programs such as the Health Care Access Pathway Program operated out of the College of New Caledonia.

“Students are working as health care support workers while they study,” says Tamara Chambers-Richards Dean of Health Sciences at CNC. “We started with 16 students and we’ve but from 2021 January to around October 2025 would have had 20 cohorts and would have graduated upwards of 400 students. So that’s one way that we’re providing means for entry.”

It is one of the programs aimed at meeting the demands for trained healthcare professionals, and the college has added many new seats in the Health Sciences department.

“We are constantly trying to meet the needs of our local partner, Northern Health, who is the major employer of our graduates, by having creative mechanisms for action. We work closely together to make sure that we’re agile and we’re responsive within our constraints and our confines.”

Northern Health says one of the best recruitment tools it has is lifestyle, work-life balance, and family atmosphere.