A number of factors have contributed to our current nursing shortage. Dr. Naz Havaei's Tier II Canada Research Chair in Strengthening the Health System aims to address them.
May 13, 2026
Congratulations to Dr. Farinaz "Naz" Havaei, the School's newest Canada Research Chair, whose research aims to address the nursing shortage by by improving nurses’ working conditions, increasing their retention and recruitment, and elevating patient care quality and safety.
Dr. Havaei's research will look at what nurses actually need to care for their patients well, going beyond simple task counts to understand the full picture of patient needs. Working alongside nurses and other care teams, she'll develop practical, evidence-based approaches to managing workload that keep patients at the centre. She'll also track what's working — for nurses, other healthcare providers, patients, families, and organizations alike.
Drawing on collaborations across disciplines, this work aims to improve outcomes for both nurses and patients across Canada and beyond.
The Canada Research Chairs Program invests up to $311 million per year to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds. Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Dr. Havaei's work will be supported as part of UBC's allocation of $10.7 million for the 2026 cycle.
Building Canada’s resilience depends on world-class research teams making discoveries that keep our country competitive and ready to meet new challenges. Through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s partnership with the Canada Research Chairs Program, we provide these teams with access to innovative facilities and advanced tools they need to push boundaries and deliver impact for Canadians.
– Sylvain Charbonneau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Foundation for Innovation
Summary of Proposal
By the early 2030s, Canada will face an estimated shortage of nearly 140,000 nurses and nursing assistants (‘nurses’ hereafter), creating a national health crisis. Stressful workplaces, marked by staffing inadequacies and heavy workloads, are driving nurse burnout, turnover, and declining patient care quality. Improving nurses’ working conditions is critical to meeting Canadians healthcare demands. Currently, healthcare decision-makers lack evidence-based workload management guidelines to make effective and equitable staffing decisions. Instead, staffing decisions are currently informed by resource availability and arbitrary or inflexible staffing policies, rather than patient needs. This Canada Research Chair in Strengthening Canada’s Health System aims to address the nursing shortage by improving nurses’ working conditions, boosting their retention and recruitment, and elevating patient care quality and safety through three objectives:
- measuring nurse workload using a comprehensive understanding of patient needs;
- co-creating a patient-centred workload management approach through integrating evidence-based tools and methodologies using patient needs; and
- evaluating implementation factors and outcomes for nurses, other healthcare professionals, patients, families, and organizations.
This multi-jurisdictional, multidisciplinary, and mixed methods research program involves two studies.
Study A (Objective 1) uses
- an environmental scan and a training workshop,
- a longitudinal application of a patient needs assessment tool; and
- time and motion study methods to measure the time nurses need to perform required care tasks at all patient needs levels.
Study B (Objectives 2 & 3) involves
- a Simulation modelling approach that can be configured to examine nursing care demands based on the unit’s context and patients’ needs;
- quarterly workshops to co-create workload management guidelines based on studies A and B findings and;
- formative and summative evaluation of implementation factors and outcomes.
For the first time ever, this research program will integrate cutting edge tools and approaches to generate a transferable and evidence-based methodology for measuring and managing nurse workload based on an understanding of patient needs and other contextual factors, inequities and specific design of a healthcare setting. This methodology will serve as a recruitment and retention strategy to help mitigate Canada’s nursing shortage.