Episode #89: Maybe they don't need to be nurses...challenging the PSW assumption with Raelynn Thomas
Everyone agrees Canada has a healthcare workforce crisis. Almost no one is looking at it correctly.
Raelynn Douglas — CEO of Rae Soleil Consulting, MBA in health and life sciences, and author of The Billion Dollar Blind Spot — spent years watching the same conversation repeat itself: not enough workers, recruiting from the Philippines, signing bonuses, and a vague commitment to improving staff wellbeing. Her argument is that this is a retention problem masquerading as a recruitment problem, and that no one is calculating what it actually costs.
The math is not subtle. An organization of 5,000 staff with 30% turnover, using a conservative $15,000 replacement cost per person, is leaking $22.5 million every year — scattered across line items, never totalled, never actioned. Gallup calls the global version a trillion-dollar preventable problem. Raelynn calls the Canadian healthcare version a billion-dollar blind spot.
On this episode of the EdUp Canada Podcast, host Michael Sangster brings Raelynn's financial and HR lens into a direct conversation about personal support workers, career pathing, the role of skills training, and what "super PSWs" could look like if we stopped treating the workforce as transactional. Her book is a field guide for healthcare leaders who want the conditions of work to change — and this conversation is a sharp, practical extension of that argument.
What to expect
[00:03:00] — "I Don't Think It's a Recruitment Problem. I Think It's a Retention Problem."
[00:04:30] — Beyond Wishful Thinking
[00:11:30] — The $10,000 Cell Phone Bill
[00:12:30] — $22.5 Million a Year. Nobody's Counting
[00:16:00] — The PSW Program That Made Nurses Stay Longer
[00:17:30] — Full-Time First. Then Everything Else.
[00:20:00] — "Maybe We Need Super PSWs"
[00:25:30] — "Don't Use Your Brakes"
Full transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/sPoF6jXR67U
Listen to past episodes here:www.edupcanada.ca