BC Nurses’ Union Leaders touring Kootenay hospitals this week
BC Nurses’ Union president Adriane Gear has spent the week meeting local nurses from hospitals across the Kootenays to discuss ongoing health-care challenges that continue to impact patient care.
The tour began in Kimberley and Fernie on Monday, July 22, and continued throughout the week with site visits to local hospitals and wellness centres in Sparwood, Creston, Trail, Grand Forks, Castlegar, Kaslo and Nelson.
Each day Gear met with nurses in an effort to hear firsthand from members and explore opportunities to improve working conditions and nurses’ ability to provide quality patient care in the region.
“So far this summer, we’ve seen how the nursing shortage is directly impacting health-care services in these smaller rural communities,” says Gear.
“Emergency rooms are routinely closing their doors leaving people with no choice but to drive long distances to seek health care. This can’t continue to be the norm.”
“Increased highway traffic, tourism, heat waves and wildfire activity make the summer months some of the most challenging for our health-care system and staff,”
“We need to come together and implement a plan that improves health care for residents and supports nurses.”
The issues
Severe staffing shortages and vacancies to the of lack of security were some of the main issues being discussed.
“At the Creston Hospital right now and you know they’re just talking about the impact of having you know so many empty lines but in some cases it’s not so much that they have vacancies but maybe that their staffing levels are just low and so the challenges of not having enough nurses to provide safe patient care and you know the burden that nurses feel to do their best” said Gear.
“I was at the Elk Valley Hospital and looking out at how beautiful it is, but also noticing that the mountain’s look very close to the hospital nnd you can see the trees that had burnt down last year in the wildfires, and the nurses are talking about what it was like to work through that.”
“They’re trying to provide care for their patients, they’re working short, they have their own households that are maybe a distance away and being worried about being evacuated and things like that.”
These challenges in our remote communities have closed emergency rooms and forced patients to drive long distances for health care. We saw this exact example happen in Creston last week.
Meanwhile, feeling safe at the workplace is of concern.
“There’s not a provision of security at these smaller hospitals, and nurses are recounting incidents of violence and not understanding why if you work in a larger hospital or an urban center that nurses who work there, that their safety is somehow valued more than a nurse that works in a smaller community or rural hospital.”
Grear noted she was unaware to hear of the lack of affordable housing in the Kootenays and the challenges it poses to recruiting and retaining staff.
“I was quite surprised to learn that there’s affordability issues as well here- the cost of housing and very low supply for housing.”
“And access to childcare is a real challenge for young families”
What can be done
Gear will take the concerns and challenges raised throughout this week back the big smoke, and further advocate for change.
“I’m going to bring it back to minimum nurse patient ratios and the fact that we’ve negotiated them, and we’re not far off of implementation and the government, has committed to implementation starting in the fall.” said Gear
“But we’re still negotiating what, although we’ve agreed to some hospital ratios, we haven’t agreed to all yet.”
“We really call on the health authorities and it’s not specific to interior health, this is all health authorities, they have to do more to keep their to keep their staff safe whether it’s nurses or other members of the health care team,”
“There’s definitely a role for specialized hospital security, we do have a model in this province for security officers and I don’t know why we’re not making sure that all hospitals have this provision but that’s certainly going to be on my list to follow up because it shouldn’t matter where you work, people’s health and safety should be valued,”
“Safe nurses means that their patients are safer too, and so that’s an area where we can make sure there’s some improvement and I think that my other takeaway is in terms of the provincial rural remote incentives- that there’s an opportunity to look into that and perhaps scale that up and have even more impact.”
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