Canada’s Health Workforce: Pathways Forward

The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) provides independent and timely assessments that inform policy and practice to address critical health challenges affecting Canadians. The CAHS helps put change into action for a healthier Canada. Health Canada funded the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences to undertake an evidence-based assessment of possible pathways forward to ease the health workforce crisis. This arms-length assessment involved reviewing more than 5,000 academic articles and 250 policy reports, and consulting more than 800 individuals from 245 organizations across Canada within a year. The assessment was guided by a diverse group of more than 30 interdisciplinary clinical and academic health workforce experts and culminated in this peer-reviewed report. This report covers support and retention, deployment and service delivery, and planning and development with particular consideration of Indigenous Peoples, rural and remote communities, and systemically disadvantaged populations. Five priority pathways for early implementation are suggested, which emerged from the 26 evidence-based leading policies and practices that were identified. Under the theme of systematically disadvantaged populations, the report, in section 4.1.4.2, emphasises the importance of ‘ensuring equitable access to care tailored to linguistic specificities’, which highlights the importance of linguistic appropriateness in healthcare. It recommends enabling healthcare practitioners to provide culturally and linguistically safe care through curricula, training programs, tools, and resources that are reinforced by policy and procedure changes.

pages: 263