Addressing the Shortage of Professional Resources in OLMCs: Strengthening Recruitment and Retention Strategies for the Benefit of New Brunswick's Francophone and Acadian Communities

Google translate: At home and abroad, COVID-19 has exposed already well-felt human resource gaps in health systems. The supply of health services and care in New Brunswick is weakened by a shortage of registered nurses and doctors, which particularly affects rural areas, where official language minority communities (OLMCs) are concentrated. Since 2008, the Vitalité Health Network (Network), whose operating language is French, serves OLMCs in four geographic areas. However, a hundred positions for doctors and approximately two hundred positions for registered nurses are to be filled in the territory administered by the Network. Faced with this reality, combined with the current health crisis, it is imperative to strengthen the Network's recruitment and retention strategies to ensure its viability and maintain services and health care that meet the needs of OLMCs. In a dynamic of co-creation of knowledge, we have thus established a partnership with the Network. The results of this study will enable our partner to identify and implement concrete solutions that emanate from its context in order to increase the recruitment rate and promote the retention of professionals in post. By taking stock of the vacancies and examining the turnover rate, it will be possible, on the one hand, to determine whether the greatest challenges are in terms of recruitment or retention. On the other hand, it will be a question of examining the factors which make attractive the internal environments, such as the working conditions, and the external (or community), such as the living environment of the professionals. The methodology is based on a mixed estimate that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches.]