The Yukon government and its employees’ union are starting to come up with solutions to the community nursing staffing issue in the territory.

An amendment will be made to the collective agreement between the government and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), allowing permanent, part-time rotational positions for primary health care nurses.

“We’re struggling to recruit and retain nurses in rural communities,” Pat Living, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Services, said Tuesday.

Health Minister Mike Nixon said the amendment will address some of the staffing difficulties.

The change to the collective agreement comes after some recent public attention on the issue, and after years of pushing for change.

Steve Geick, the president of the Yukon Employees’ Union, wrote an open letter to Nixon last month, urging him and the department to take action on nurses working alone in the communities.

The Yukon NDP also took the issue to the legislature last spring and again in this current session.

In a statement from the NDP, the approach to recruitment and retention of health professionals was deemed to be “failing miserably.”

Most Yukon communities are meant to have two full-time registered nurses employed – both on call 24 hours every day.

“(The government) has a number of float positions based out of Whitehorse that they haven’t been able to fill for quite a time,” Geick told the Star today.

“If they have interest from people who want part-time, that will hopefully allow them to fill those float positions.

“It’s a really good first step.”

Previously, the government had been extensively using auxiliary-on-call (AOC) nurses, who would travel to communities for a period of three or four weeks.

If a nurse happened to be working alone in a community and wanted to take time off, an AOC would have to be flown in to cover that nurse.

But they may or may not be always available to come, Geick said.

“When you’re relying on AOCs ... there’s no guarantee you’re going to have someone.”

The amendment – having part-time nurses coming to the communities in 10-week rotations – has the “potential” to secure a second nurse in communities where one staff member is burnt out, Living said.

“It would ensure that all of our positions would be filled on a permanent basis,” she said.

Geick acknowledges there are lingering issues with community nursing he would like to see addressed – which could be brought forward now that the union has started this winter’s round of bargaining.

And the issue of recruiting and retaining professionals, he said, extends past nursing and the Department of Health and Social Services.

“I don’t see this as something that is isolated to community nursing,” Geick said.

It is just one example of the union and government thinking “outside the box” for new solutions.

The amendment will be independently reviewed six months before the end of the new collective agreement to assess effectiveness on recruitment and retention of nurses.