BURST
Growing up in the beautiful Crescent Valley outside Cranbrook, Andreas Kamp said he always wanted to help people, giving a speech on volunteerism as a child and believing that his goal in life was to support others.
Now a fourth-year nursing student in Cranbrook taking classes through a University of Victoria program held at the College of the Rockies, Kamp said he worries that the province’s plan to discontinue a $2,000-a-year tuition grant for student nurses on Aug. 1 will force some of his classmates to leave the program.
Brought in by the NDP in September 2023 to help more people afford to become nurses , the nursing tuition grant is provided to universities who then disburse it to nursing students.
Because clinical instruction for the program runs into late May for first- and second-year students, and until late July for third- and fourth-years, Kamp says students have little time to work summer jobs and save up to pay for the next year of classes and clinical instruction.
“The nursing grant helped myself and other students not go into further debt because this is an expensive program, and it’s also helped many of us stay in the program,” said Kamp. “I know classmates of mine who may not be able to stay in the program with this grant being discontinued, and it really just shows the disregard for the nursing profession as a whole from the province of B.C.”
Kamp said the total cost of his third year of nursing school was $8,909, including $4,000 for his clinical instruction this summer.
He said he’s lucky in the sense that he only has one year left and can power through, but many of the people who are entering their second or third years, or even starting their first year, are facing a tougher dcision.
“My peers and I have made the choice to become nurses, in this case registered nurses, not only because we’re caring and compassionate and empathetic, but because we see that the health-care system is struggling, and that is directly affecting the outcomes of patients in British Columbia,” said Kamp. “With this grant being discontinued, it can be hard to get motivated to go into it when you see that the province is not supporting us at this point of our career.”
In a statement, the Health Ministry didn’t respond to questions about the elimination of the grant or what it meant for student nurses. Instead, a spokesperson for the ministry pointed to other supports that are available, such as the $2,000-a-year nurses education bursary for students who can demonstrate financial need and the B.C. loan forgiveness program for certain health-care workers in underserved communities.
The elimination of the tuition benefit comes as B.C. nurses are in mediation with their employer following 12 days of job action.
The B.C. Nurses’ Union says nurses are understaffed and experiencing burnout with the province facing a shortage of between 4,500 and 6,000 full-time nurses. This has complicated the province’s commitment to implementing nurse-to-patient rations that were promised in 2023.
Members of the union rejected an offer from the province in June, with 67 per cent voting against ratifying the new agreement, which would have given nurses a 12-per-cent raise over four years, as well as added benefits, improved safety measures and money to implement the ratios.
Ryan Criztoff Tandiama and Alicia Pongracz of the Canadian Nursing Students’ Association say nursing students in B.C. already have problems affording tuition with the benefit.
Pongracz, who studies at Selkirk College in Castlegar and has to traverse the Kootenays for her education, said that up to 20 per cent of the students she started her program with have dropped out.
“I had to pay just about $4,000 worth of tuition to work 192 hours a month and barely scratch my way out of it. And now I’m going to be using my one month off to work as many jobs as I can to hopefully survive the next round,” she said.
Criztoff Tandiama, who is studying at the University of the Fraser Valley, said that many nursing students have kids or other financial strains. He said that clinical placements are unpaid, which already puts pressure on nursing students as it sees them working long hours for no pay and struggling to find other ways to pay for necessities like rent or food.
“I’m working my unpaid student nursing shifts, and then on my days off, I’m working part-time to help manage tuition, rent, groceries with the increased cost of living,” said Tandiama. “And while this does apply to everyone studying, nursing students in particular put in hundreds of hours of unpaid work, where we are asked to provide somewhat of a similar level of care.”