It's no secret nurses play a very important role in society, so when Saskatchewan had a shortage, of not just nurses but all medical professionals in the province, the government made it a top priority to make it easier for medical professionals to receive the training and to stay in the province. Jim Reiter, Minister of Health for Saskatchewan, spoke about what the government did, "I think we're doing pretty good right across the province when we were given the privilege to inform the government there was a shortage of nurses, and we made recruitment a big priority for us and I think we have been pretty successful across the board, there are 38,000 more nurses of all designation in the province then there was a little over a decade ago."

Reiter talked about what was done to set this change in motion, "There was a number of things that were done there was actually a significant salary increase there was an emphasis on training availability, training spots to train more nurses. Whether it's nurses or doctors, if you can train people locally it tends to increase the chances that they will stay in the province and of course, we just made recruitment an effort regardless of where people were trained you need to make offers to people for employment and we did that and generally speaking most people would agree it has been successful."

Reiter also talks about what that growth looked like for Rosetown, "Nurses increased by about 12 percent now the numbers sound a little bit wonky because they're in percentages because they are they're referred to as F.T.E's, Full Time Equivalents, so sometimes it comprised of more than one person working part-time. We went from 26.1 nurses in 07 to just under 30 nurses right now."

So what does it mean when the government focuses this much time and attention into an issue such as this? Rieter explains, "I think what it speaks to is the quality of healthcare, you can't have quality healthcare without an appropriate number of medical professionals, whether its doctor's nurses other supporting medical professionals, its all very important and recruitment can be an issue not just in Saskatchewan but right across the country. When focusing on it you can have some success and we have been fortunate enough to see some success."