Thank you very much for your question.
I will refer you to our report, Tested Solutions for Eliminating Canada's Registered Nurses Shortage, because it addresses some of your questions.
Starting with student retention, we know that a high percentage of students leave in their first year of learning, and it's clear that we do need to have some programs that will help retain students. We know that if we can reduce by even 10% the number of students who leave, that will actually have an impact on the numbers of nurses graduating and who are able to enter the workforce.
So we do need to provide some support. We have students who are starting a second or third career. They have families and therefore they need to have some social programs that will help them, certainly from a financial perspective, or even in terms of better support to help with adjustment and so on.
So I think that has been identified. We've seen this is a policy direction that needs to be addressed.
In relation to absenteeism in the workforce, and certainly the quality of work life of nurses, again I think our report identifies the high percentage involved. If we can address some policy to retaining our nurses and improving the work life and work conditions of nurses, removing barriers for them so that they can practise to their full scope, and providing them with the necessary support, that will have an impact on retention of our nurses and on keeping our nurses in a healthy workplace environment. So definitely, there's a need to address some of that.
CNA has also produced, in collaboration with RNAO, which is within one of our jurisdictions, a report on nurse fatigue. That report identifies some evidence that we need to pay attention to. It requires a collaborative and collective approach between the employers, the nurses, the professional body, such as our association, the Canadian Nurses Association, and the government to create an environment and address some of the barriers and the hindrances in the workplace. It takes a collective effort. It's not just one side: it requires federal intervention as well as provincial intervention.
Retaining nurses over the age of 60 was another policy direction in our Tested Solutions report, where we see there are models for doing so. We can retain nurses so that they work beyond the age of 60 and over 65, provided we create a climate that will address their work balance. There are models right now that have been tested, where there's an 80-20 situation. So nurses who are more senior in their practice and more experienced and are older can become mentors for the younger generation and provide other types of services so they're not fully into direct care. Again, you try to retain them as long as you can, but you need to adjust their work conditions.