Interior nurses fear understaffing and violence at work as public health concerns mount
Just in time for flu season, Interior Health Authority wants to achieve savings by over-crowding and understaffing wards, and is not addressing nurses' grave concerns about their safety
Nurses in British Columbia's Interior region are feeling the budgetary pressures of a health authority ordered by the provincial government to cut millions from necessary health spending.
"It doesn't take long for the spending cuts to translate into pain and suffering for patients, our members and the communities they are in," said BC Nurses' Union President Debra McPherson. "It is hurtful and hypocritical for the provincial government to oblige health authorities to make spending cuts to stay in the black while the province's own budget allows for a record deficit."
At Kelowna General Hospital, nurses are routinely made to work in wards operating beyond the patient capacity they are supposed to handle. Nurses also have serious concerns about the surreptitious methods being employed to cut costs by the health authority.
The practice of not covering first sick calls in several of Penticton Regional Hospital's busiest wards has meant that nurses work their shift short staffed, with no attempt made by the employer to cover that position, thus saving on staff wages. The practice is burning nurses out just when the busy H1N1 season is peaking.
"The quiet way in which these poor decisions are being made causes us great concern," said BCNU Okanagan-Similkameen Regional Chair Rhonda Croft. "The lack of transparency makes us feel undervalued; making cuts by stealth creates an unnecessary environment of fear in the workplace".
In another example, at Kelowna General Hospital, the ward dedicated for renal in-patients is being converted to an Alternate Level of Care (ALC) unit, meaning that renal patients currently treated there will be shuffled out to various locations. The ward houses specialized infectious disease control areas, including two negative pressure chambers and two infection control rooms, which will now be used as lodging for seniors who are waiting for long term beds.
A Thanksgiving weekend incident at Kelowna General Hospital where a member of the public attacked two workers in the ER should serve as a wake-up call about the need to address nurses' concerns about violence in the workplace. "It is completely unacceptable for nurses to be exposed to this kind of violence when they go to work," concluded McPherson.
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