We are told again and again that “mobility” is “for the good of patients.” Allow us to doubt these assertions. As nurses, our doubt comes from real experience; the “mobility” that the government is demanding in the current negotiations is nothing new. We have been experiencing it for years now. When Ministers Dubé, LeBel and company proclaim that it is “for the patients” that we must be able to “move nurses where they are needed,” allow us to ask: where would nurses be taken from right now and put elsewhere?
There is not a single place in Quebec where caregivers can be removed without having an impact on the provision of care, not to mention the expertise lost and the devastating effect on morale of the troops of pretending that nurses are like interchangeable pawns. We would never ask a pediatrician to replace a neurosurgeon at the last minute because “there are not enough people.” That would be totally absurd. However, this is what we have been asking—no, demanding—of nurses for several years now, resulting in the crisis we are currently experiencing.
We tried mobility. It is not an innovative solution; it is difficult, in fact, to call “mobility” a “solution”. It is as much a solution as the famous “mandatory overtime”; it causes more problems than it solves. We tried “mobility” (“load shedding”) in 2020 with the pandemic, and, before that, several environments merged care units to force nurses to move around. We lost thousands of nurses as a result. Gone, crushed and demoralized by a system that not only seems to despise us, but also makes care, our work, more and more difficult.
Where is democracy, in health?
Reforms and gags
Most caregivers in the network today have never known anything other than reforms imposed under a gag order. Regardless of the party in power, a collective shudder of apprehension runs through us when a new Minister of Health and Social Services is chosen.
One after the other, ministers come to perpetuate the spiral into the abyss of endless reforms. They can get out of this spiral after their term; caregivers, for their part, have no choice but to stay there. Our politicians, regardless of their intentions, demonstrate to us again and again that they really know very little about the network.
They draft monstrous bills that they have adopted under gag orders (this is our third reform adopted under gag order in 20 years). Do we live in a democracy? Oh really, because in the health and social services network, we rather have the impression of being subjected to the will of one dictator after another. Always the gag, always the stick.
And yet. We have been proposing solutions for decades. In the absence of listening to decision-makers, we come together, we inform ourselves, we do research.
Here is our latest baby, a comprehensive guide to nurse retention that took over two years to develop, almost entirely through volunteer work. “Mobility,” as proposed by the current government, is not in this guide. But fear not! This fantastic toolkit contains solutions that are cheaper and more effective than another mega-reform.
This stubbornness of the government’s “mobility” risks costing the network dearly. But at the stage of assessing the damage, Mr. Dubé will probably no longer be there, he will have changed careers or moved on, like his predecessors. They are never the ones to pick up the pieces. We have had enough. We hope that nurses will go back on strike, will increase their pressure tactics. You can oppose a nurses’ strike, but know that no nurses’ strike has done as much damage to the network and care as the mega-reforms of our health ministers.
There is no administrative labor tribunal for politicians, there are only caregivers and the rare means of pressure that we are authorized to use to mitigate the damage of their ambitions.