BCNU Council Members Bring Call for Minimum Nurse-patient Ratios to Victoria

BCNU President Adriane Gear and members of the union’s provincial council are in Victoria this week calling on the government to make minimum nurse-patient ratios a priority. Ratios are a key policy solution that will help address the critical nurse staffing shortage and improve patient care, bring relief to nurses working in the system today and create the safe, healthy and supportive workplaces needed to recruit nurses required in the future.

It’s been six months since the government reached an agreement to bring nurse-patient ratios to all health-care settings in BC. Gear, along with other BCNU leaders, will be meeting with the Premier and MLAs from all political parties to hold government accountable and discuss the benefits ratios will have for health care and patients in their constituencies.

Grueling and unsustainable working conditions have an alarming number of nurses looking for the exit sign, and the more than 5,000 nurse vacancies in the province are making it increasingly difficult to meet people’s health-care needs.

The exodus of nurses from the public system has also seen health authorities turn increasingly to expensive for-profit staffing agencies, spending tens of millions of dollars in an attempt to staff unfilled positions. Meanwhile, the list of temporary emergency department closures and service disruptions continues to grow.

A recent report from the Canadian Institute of Health Information confirms what nurses have been telling politicians for years and paints a grim picture of the current state of the health-care system.