Inuvik (Mar 20/98) - The Inuvik region is going through a lot of nurses and could have trouble finding new recruits as early as next year.

Twenty-eight of the region's 59 nurses left last year and while the Inuvik Regional Health and Social Services Board was able to replace them, due mainly to a surplus of nurses in eastern Canada as a result of ongoing hospital cutbacks there and two full-scale recruiting drives, that may not always be the case.

Due to low wages and benefits when high Northern rents and costs-of-living are taken into account, and a nation-wide shortage of nurses being predicted this decade, Inuvik hospital CEO Ray Scott says as early as next year this area could be in a nurses' crunch.

"Salary and benefits are not significantly higher than in the south and don't compensate for the cost of rent," he told the hospital board at its annual general meeting on Sunday.

He said in many cases, nurses are being paid no more than they would earn in a southern hospital, and the GNWT, which determines the rates nurses will be paid at, has shown little evidence that it is remedying the problem.

While the hospital was successful in recruiting the new nurses this time, he noted that the retention rate for keeping them here has not improved.

As hospitals in the south begin hiring again, the supply of nurses will dry up, he predicted, and unless pay and benefits in the North are improved, few will be persuaded to work in the North.

"A lot of nurses are being recruited out of the country entirely," he said.

"My sense is this problem may get worse before it gets better."