The Working Conditions of Nurses: Confronting the Challenges

This issue of the Health Policy Research Bulletin examines research on the state of working conditions facing Canada's nurses and discusses the implications for the larger health care system. In particular, this issue provides a snapshot of the current nursing work force, highlighting prominent trends and areas where the three regulated nursing professions differ; examines nurses' working conditions in light of recent health system changes, highlighting the effects of increasing demands on nurses' health and presenting newly released results from a Statistics Canada survey; applies the supply-demand theory to examine nursing shortages, using newly developed models to predict the nursing specialties that will have the greatest shortages; discusses the issue of patient safety, and highlights research linking working conditions and the quality of patient care, focusing on conditions that affect communication among nurses and other front-line providers and presents new research, commissioned by Health Canada, on the challenges of translating research into action to improve the working conditions of health professionals
The Working Conditions of Nurses: Confronting the Challenges