Canadians Lack Confidence That Canada Will Have Enough Health Care Professionals in 10 Year's Time

Ottawa, Ontario - In 2006, World Health Day (celebrated annually on 7 April), is devoted to the health workforce crisis. An Ipsos Reid study conducted on behalf of the Health Action Lobby (HEAL) among Canadians has found that the majority of Canadians (63%) disagree with the statement "I am confident that in ten year's time that Canada will have enough health professionals to meet our future needs."

Canadians are unanimous (98%) in their recognition of the specialized skill set of health professionals; compassion, a commitment to excellence, and high levels of accountability and responsibility. While the majority of Canadians (68%) agree that they would recommend that their children consider a career in health, an equal proportion (70%) of Canadians regard health careers as stressful due to a lack of health professionals and resources, rather than fulfilling (28%).

The majority of Canadians (60%) feel that access to health services is best improved through an increase in health professionals. Additionally, a large majority of Canadians (93%) agree that Canada should strive to become self-sufficient in training enough health professionals to meet Canada's needs.

To this end, the majority of Canadians (61%) agree that a national strategy and plan is needed to ensure the future supply of health professionals. Over nine in ten (91%) Canadians agree that a national health workforce plan should be based on Canada's projected demographics and health needs.

The Health Action Lobby (HEAL) is a coalition of national health and consumer associations and organizations dedicated to protecting and strengthening Canada's health care system. It represents more than half a million providers and consumers of health care. HEAL's overarching mission is dedicated to protecting and strengthening Canada's health care system, and health human resources has been identified as its key priority.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid/Canadian HEAL poll conducted from March 28 to March 30, 2006. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1,001 adult Canadians was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1773.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadians population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data.
Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Mike Colledge
Senior Vice President
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(613) 241-5802