BC’s health human resources crisis – characterized by critical shortages of health care workers – remains acute and disproportionately affects women. Approximately 90% of nurses and allied health professionals in BC are women, yet the working conditions driving their burnout, attrition and mental health challenges remain systematically under-addressed in both research and policy. More than one-third regularly face workplace violence and nearly one in four work overtime — conditions well established as antecedents of anxiety, depression, and stress. Despite the scale of BC’s recruitment and retention crisis, researchers and frontline clinicians and health systems leaders (researcher users) who are best positioned to act on women’s mental health have limited opportunities to come together, identify shared challenges, and explore collaborative solutions.
The Workforce Evidence for Labour and Leadership (WELL) Collaborative is a half-day hybrid meeting designed to bring researchers and research users together. The aim is to collaboratively identify strategies to improve workforce sustainability, wellbeing, retention, and system capacity. The hybrid event will be hosted at the UBC-Vancouver School of Nursing, with both in-person and virtual participation ensuring inclusion of key partners from across BC.
Approximately 20–30 participants will attend, including researchers, nurses, social workers, health system leaders, policymakers, and health care workers with lived experience of mental health challenges. This cross-sector mix is deliberate — sustainable solutions require researchers and research users to first understand one another’s priorities, constraints, and opportunities before collaborative work can begin.
The meeting will open with facilitated introductions and context setting. This will be followed by a structured conversation about participants’ experiences of workforce challenges (e.g., burnout, stress, lifestyle factors, workplace conditions, access to supports) as it relates to women’s mental health. Small breakout groups will explore shared interests, priority areas, and research questions participants most want to answer together. A closing session will identify concrete opportunities for future collaboration. Anticipated outcomes include new relationships formed across research and practice, a shared understanding of key challenges and priorities, and the foundation for a future collaborative research agenda.