Provincial data shows that for every 100 nurses hired, Manitoba lost 57

A provincial document shows turnover is wiping out more than half of the profits Manitoba makes from hiring nurses.

Details of nurse appointments and departures obtained by CBC News through a freedom of information request show that about 57 out of every 100 nurses the province brought into the public health-care system between April 2024 and May 2025 left.

“It’s a lot, but the nurses are very, very frustrated,” Sonia Udod said. An associate professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba who has studied the challenges in retaining nurses.

Document shows net profit There were 735 nurses in full- and part-time positions during that time period, the province added 1,697 nurses to the public health care system and lost 962.

The number lost will include nurses who quit, retired or moved to a private agency.

“Right now we are in a crisis,” said U of MK Udod.

“So we’re trying to recruit health officials to improve staffing and reassure people in the community that we have enough people,” he said.

“But this is a response to a crisis. We need to focus on retention.”

Coordinated approach to retention: Minister

UDOD held a nurse retention workshop in Winnipeg last November, where nurses cited excessive workload and not feeling recognized or valued for their work as key complaints.

New nurses crave guidance, Udod also found, but there still aren’t enough senior nurses working to provide it.

establishment of Minimum nurse-to-patient ratioWhat the NDP government is working on is one way to address those grievances, but more measures are needed, Udod said.

Provincial recruiting numbers align with a recent reports From the Montreal Economic Institute, Udod notes, it found that 58 Manitoba nurses under the age of 35 will leave the workforce in 2023 for every 100 who will enter the workforce.

“It’s new nurses who are leaving, nurses who are just graduating with a year to go, and nurses with one to five years (of experience) who are also leaving,” Udod said.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the decline in hiring, which still shows an overall net gain, is “a snapshot in time rather than the full trajectory of Manitoba’s nursing workforce.”

The province is taking a coordinated approach to recruitment and retention, including “expanding pathways for internationally educated nurses, strengthening training and re-entry programs, and working directly with rural and regional partners” to expand the workforce, she said in a statement.

Net loss in Prairie Mountains

The breakdown also provides recruitment and departure numbers by regional health authority over the same 13 months.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Shared Health, the provincial agency, both lost nearly half of their profits due to the departures.

Winnipeg’s health region gained 793 nurses but lost 438, while Shared Health hired 415 nurses and lost 209.

The only health region to experience a net loss in permanent nursing staff was Prairie Mountain in western Manitoba, which saw a net loss of 23 nurses (161 departures vs. 138 hires).

Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, said these numbers are especially worrying because nurses in the region are graduating from Brandon University and Assiniboine Community College.

Prairie Mountain has several small facilities in close proximity to each other that sometimes share emergency services due to staffing vacancies, she said.

“New nurses want to work in an environment that is engaging, where they have support, and I think in some smaller facilities, there isn’t that support that a new graduate needs,” Jackson said.

However, Prairie Mountain Health said if contingent nurses are included in the provincial count — which only includes full- and part-time employees — there was actually a net gain of 59 nurses in the 2024-25 period.

But Jackson said the net benefit of casual nurses isn’t the same as adding permanent staff, because casual workers don’t have guaranteed hours.

“They do not represent a steady or predictable increase in baseline staffing,” he said.

However, Asagwara said in a recent interview that the province’s count is a “more conservative approach” and “slightly underrepresents the net new nurses who are joining the front lines.”

A ministerial spokesperson also said that if the deadline is extended from October 2023, when the NDP government was elected, to July 2025, Prairie Mountain could see an increase of 48 net new permanent nurses.

Asagwara also said Prairie Mountain has historically faced its biggest staffing challenges, but there are signs of improvement.

Prairie Mountain officials have visited schools to highlight careers in health and have started a training program for health care aides, Asagwara said.

He said the region has brought more nurses into the float pool than any other — the public system’s answer to private nursing agencies.