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NUNAVUT - Nunavut Tunngavik is creating its own action plan to attract and retain Inuit nurses in hopes it will enhance the Nunavut government's efforts to deal with the shortage of nurses territory-wide.

Though the legislative assembly passed the Nunavut Nurse Recruitment and Retention Strategy in June, with the announcement of financial incentives for nurses working in the territory, NTI is going ahead with putting together its own project.

When asked if NTI the initiative stemmed from dissatisfaction with the GN strategy, NTI president Paul Kaludjak said, "There's always room for improvement and we always lobby the government to look at Aboriginal Health Human Resources differently because Inuit require different recognition and different understanding on their own culture."

The GN announcement promised an increase in base salary and northern allowance for all nurses in Nunavut. Also, as part of the GN's retention strategy, front-line nurses and nursing assistants are now offered one-time longevity bonuses of up to $20,000 based on years of service. An additional increase of $9,000 was made to the annual special allowance given to front-line nurses.

While the government's strategy is aimed at addressing the nursing shortage, Kaludjak sees NTI's initiative as addressing the need for Inuit nurses in particular.

"Our hope is always to work together and NTI always collaborates with Nunavut government in terms of putting our two (cents) into the government to best approaches and procedures and to make appropriate recommendations that would work for Nunavut and our Inuit," he said.

There are currently seven Inuit students enrolled in the first year of the four-year Nunavut Nursing Program. The number of students going through the program isn't enough according to Kaludjak, who sees the lack of opportunities for education as one of the main barriers to recruiting Inuit nurses."The training project's not being able to fulfil that demand out there," said Kaludjak. "And the education initiatives are few and far between and we need nurses now and we hope that our government can take the initiative to train nurses and make that training available a little more readily."

Nunavut Employees Union president Doug Workman also sees little being done to provide Inuit with the skills they need to enter the health field.

"With the Government of Nunavut, they tell you they have an Inuit employment plan and in fact they do, but it's not a real training program," he said.

"They talk about plans, but we don't see any training of Inuit separately and thankfully, somebody at NTI is listening."

Workman cited housing and salary as other barriers to recruiting and retaining nursing staff as well as government staff in general.

"If you're a single wage earner in a community anywhere here and you're living in government staff housing, you need to make over $100,000," he said, adding that the GN's latest retention incentives don't account for the cost of living in Nunavut.

"Nobody's saying (the retention incentive) money isn't nice, it's just that the cost of living up here is so high and it's one thing if you're single, but most of the Inuit nurses ... (have) families and it's hard."