Question

Identify bias in the following article

Supply of nurses falls in Canada for the first time in almost 20 years: report

KELLY GRANTHEALTH REPORTER

HEALTH REPORTER

PUBLISHED JUNE 23, 2015UPDATED MAY 15, 2018

The supply of nurses in Canada has declined for the first time in almost 20 years, according to a new report that has prompted two prominent national nursing organizations to warn that the country needs to do a better job of managing the health-care workforce.

The latest snapshot of the nursing field from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found that more nurses left the profession than entered it in 2014 – a 0.3-per-cent decrease from the previous year in the number of people holding active nursing licences across the country.

The supply of registered nurses – by far the most common nursing category – fell 1 percent.

At the same time, the number of nurses actually working in the field continued to climb last year, up 2.2 percent from 2013, in keeping with the stable growth of the past 10 years.

"The sum of all the numbers is a tightening nursing labour market," Karima Velji, president of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), said in a statement. "Immediate action is needed to stave off the potentially long-lasting trend of a shrinking [registered nurse] workforce and its consequences for population health."

The CNA is a professional organization that advocates for nurse-friendly public policy.

Andrea Porter-Chapman, CIHI's manager of health workforce information, said it is too early to say whether the dip in supply marks the start of a nursing shortage in Canada or a one-year blip thanks to a regulatory change in Ontario. Either way, health policy-makers will need to watch the trends closely over the next couple of years, she said.

"This is the first shift in almost two decades where we've seen a decline in the supply," Ms. Porter-Chapman said. "But the positive side of this is that our workforce continues to increase. ... I think [the supply issue] is something that our health-care system just needs to be aware of and monitor."

When it comes to nursing in Canada, the term "supply" refers to the number of people holding active licences with the provincial bodies that regulate the profession.

But not all licensed nurses work in nursing. Some hold on to their licences after landing other jobs, going back to school or unofficially retiring.

Last year, the College of Nurses of Ontario, the self-regulating body that oversees the profession in Canada's most populous province, put in place a new rule that effectively bars members from renewing their licences unless they have practised nursing in the province in the past three years. That contributed to an unusually high number of nurses formally exiting the profession in Ontario – 15,836 in one year.

Still, the CIHI report identified some underlying trends that suggest there is more at play.

Across the country, a total of 27,757 nurses let their licences lapse last year, while only 25,397 registered anew with one of the provincial or territorial regulators – a net loss of 2,360.

The supply of nurses dropped in six jurisdictions: Newfoundland and Labrador (down 0.7 percent), Prince Edward Island (down 3.5 percent), New Brunswick (down 0.9 percent), Ontario (down 2.6 percent), British Columbia (down 0.9 percent) and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which together saw a decrease of 3.2 percent.

Canada's nursing schools are simply not graduating as many students. "We've seen the growth in the number of [nursing] graduates slow down, so it's just under 1 percent now," Ms. Porter-Chapman said. "This is after five years where the growth was between 6 and 12 percent."

As well, the number of students admitted to entry-level nursing programs actually fell between 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the most recent year for which CIHI was able to obtain national figures.

"Will the workplace feel it yet? Perhaps not. It might take a year or two to see these changes trickle into work settings," said Linda McGillis Hall, a professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Toronto. "I think this report will actually bring this issue to the forefront again."

The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), an umbrella organization that represents almost 200,000 nurses and nursing students from eight provincial unions, said the decline in supply may already be leading to increased overtime and absenteeism.

The CFNU's latest report found that nurses across the country worked more than 19 million hours of overtime in 2014, 20 percent of it unpaid. Absenteeism was up too.

"The decrease in the nursing supply combined with an ageing workforce and fewer students admitted to [entry-level nursing] programs is a sign that our health-care workforce is in transition," CFNU president Linda Silas said in an e-mailed statement. "To ensure patient safety and a sustainable health-care system, we need a national health human resources plan."

is there any bias present in the article?

Answer 1

There is confirmation bias in this article

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. For example as mentioned in this article there is a 0.3-per-cent decrease from the previous year in the number of people holding active nursing licences across the country and also the supply of registered nurses fell 1 percent. However, it was reported at the same time that the number of nurses actually working in the field continued to climb last year, up 2.2 percent from 2013.

The numbers are still good as per my view and decrease as small as 0.3% are insignificant if one views the larger picture. Although as reported there was increased unpaid overtime but still the nurses number are up. The article thus has confirmation bias where they want to draw attention to the fact that there is dearth of nurses in Canada and according to data there is no such shortage.