The federal budget incentive to get more healthcare workers into rural areas by forgiving student loans may not be the best way to get quality care to underserved regions, says a B.C. nursing instructor.

Tuesday's budget calls for up to $40,000 student loan forgiveness for doctors and $20,000 for nurses willing to work in small or remote towns.

But sending new graduates to work in remote areas may be a healthcare risk, according to Maura MacPhee, who teaches nursing at UBC.

"It's a very dangerous thing to put new nurses, in particular, into an environment where they don't have the organizational supports and the leader or management supports that we know are very important," MacPhee told CBC News.

MacPhee said many new nurses aren't experienced enough to deal with limited resources.

"Things like taking care of patients in hallways, those types of things are really scary to them," she said. "They don't know how to do that. They haven't been trained to do that."

BCIT Nursing Student Jessica Poitras expects to owe about $35,000 by the time she finishes school.

If it meant paying off some of those loans, she said she'd move in a heartbeat, once she had a few more years training.

"I would do it," Poitras said. "I don't want to be in debt … That affects your whole life."

The loan-forgiveness would come in the form an annual grant for up to five years.

With files from the CBC's Angie Brar