Your Alberta Health Act – Our Health Workforce

Alberta’s health workforce

As of March 2009, Alberta’s Health Care and Social Assistance labour force consisted of 192,400 people – just under half (85,376) of those people were employees of Alberta Health Services.

Within Alberta’s health system, health care workers are employed in either publicly or privately operated facilities. For example, of the 7,187 physicians registered in Alberta on March 2009, Alberta Health Services had close to 300 in their employment. The remaining 6,800 worked in public facilities or private community clinics. In contrast, of the 31,289 Registered Nurses actively registered in Alberta in March 2009, 22,907 worked for Alberta Health Services providing front-line care, with others working in management and administrative roles.

Where do Alberta’s health care workers come from?

Alberta gets the vast majority of its health workers from education and training programs within the province. There are 186 diverse programs within Alberta that train and educate our future health workers. In the 2008/2009 academic year, there were almost 26,000 students enrolled in these programs, with 7,341 of those students graduating from their programs.

While most health workers in Alberta were educated and trained in Alberta, there is and always has been a steady supply of health workers that have been educated in other provinces and countries. In the last few years, the number of health workers coming to Alberta from other provinces and countries has increased thanks largely to more immigration and Alberta’s strong economy.

The proportion of Alberta’s health workers who are internationally educated varies for each profession. In 2008, 29 per cent of Alberta’s physicians, 11 per cent of Alberta’s pharmacists, eight per cent of Alberta’s regulated nurses, and 15 per cent of Alberta’s physiotherapists were educated internationally.