Young people think of a career in health care because it’s rewarding—helping others get well and stay healthy while potentially saving lives and making a real difference. In Alberta alone, 3.9 million Albertans are helped by the skilled professionals of Alberta Health Services (AHS).
As Canada’s first province-wide, fully integrated health system, AHS offers a plethora of jobs that aren’t just in Edmonton or Calgary. Delivering a wide range of health-care support services, the AHS has more than 400 facilities across the province with over 104,000 well-trained professionals providing services to residents in smaller towns.
Barbara Mader, site manager—rural and community hospitals McLennan, says that a rural nurse is more of a well-rounded medical professional than other specialist nurses. “Where an oncology nurse can give you a great deal of information and detail on cancer, if it’s a stroke they might not be as helpful. You get to know more disease processes; not in the big full picture, but you know enough to support them through different things.”
As a rural nurse, your specialty is that you’re really good at a lot of things. “That in itself becomes a specialty,” she says, “because you don’t have one area focus but you have such a broad spectrum and such a wide variety there that you have to know a little bit about everything—everything right from birth to death.”
Barbara made the choice to move to a rural setting simply because there was a high demand for nurses there. “When I graduated, there weren’t a lot of jobs, so I made the move to a rural area where people give directions by quarter mile and north and south. But I was also the envy of my classmates from school because I was able to achieve a more independent practice much earlier than anyone in the city.”
Mader says that direct contact with a team of medical personnel in a rural setting trumps the lack of physician-nurse interaction in an urban setting. A lot of times in urban settings, nurses relay messages to the physician through medical students, even for things as simple as a Tylenol.
“In a rural setting, we have standard protocols that we have worked out with the medical team that enables us to do a little bit more independent work,” she says. Along with perks, there are challenges as well: long hours, adversity, and occasional tough job-related situations.
Recent economic activity in Alberta has seen a large number of newcomers from all around Canada moving to the oil province. Everyone comes from a wide background and, in a town of 800, you become like family.
Photo: Alberta Health Services