Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 14/01) - Northern nursing students say the government needs to do even more to keep them here.

That was the message delivered to Health and Social Services Minister Jane Groenewegen when she toured Aurora College this week.

Thanks to a collaboration with the University of Victoria, nurses can now upgrade their diplomas to degrees through the college.

The college has also added a 16-month nurse practitioner program and will be offering a four-year degree program next year.

There are about 250 nursing students at Aurora College this year.

"We see you as the solution to our ability to deliver health services," Groenewegen told second-year nursing students.

During a question-and-answer session, the students told the minister that the GNWT needs to do more to keep them in the North.

"Are we recruiting as actively as the people who are recruiting us?" asked Tanya Round, referring to lucrative offers from places as far away as California. "Because we don't seem as desperate as they do."

Groenewegen told students the GNWT has allocated $1.5 million a year towards recruitment.

Amy Lea, from Ontario, said she'd stay in the North after she graduates if her loans were forgiven.

The general sentiment from the students was "pay us well, help relieve our debt, and we'll stay."

Maggie Jacobs graduated from Aurora College's first nursing class in 1996. She said all but three or four students in her class are still in the North.

But Susan MacInnis, who graduated one year later, said only four out of 14 students in her class stayed.

They attribute this, in part, to changes in the mentorship program.

Students used to work with a nurse for four months to get experience. That's how Jacobs got her job. But the year later, MacInnis says not everyone was given this opportunity.

Natasha Mason, a first-year nursing student and single mom with three children under four, has lived here for three years. "The government isn't doing enough for those who aren't from the North, but study here," she said.

Mason has a one-year remissible loan, but said next year she could be on her own.

"I have to make my income stretch and it only stretches so far," she said. "It's frustrating. People say, 'Stay here, work in the North,' but there's no incentive."