New strategies for monitoring the health of Canadian nurses: results of collaborations with key stakeholders

The aim of this descriptive study was to help policy- and decision-makers enhance the health of the Canadian nursing workforce by highlighting key factors of concern and exploring options for collecting and utilizing nurses' health data. This paper describes the views of 62 nursing stakeholders from a diverse spectrum of professional, labour, management and government perspectives from across Canada, regarding key factors contributing to work-related health problems in the nursing profession, particularly those relating to the work environment and hospital restructuring. The results were combined with a synthesis of existing information sources about the health of nurses in Canada. With respect to the key concerns, musculoskeletal conditions/injuries and stress and burnout were identified as nurses' major work-related health problems. An examination of the data synthesis inventory revealed that no existing data sources can adequately profile nurses' health, especially in relation to the components of the Conceptual Model of Nurses' Health developed in the study. Three strategies for monitoring nurses' health are proposed