Despite the efforts made to attract staff, the health and social services network has nearly 13,400 fewer employees than a year ago, a setback that is hitting regions like Lanaudière, Outaouais and Bas-Saint-Laurent.
The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) promised Thursday to add 5,600 professionals in four years to the health network. But both François Legault’s party and those of his opponents will have to promise to do a lot if they want to get the health care system back on track.
According to the performance dashboard of the Ministry of Health and Human Services, the network had 334,445 employees as of July 30, 2022, compared to the peak of 347,000 reached a year earlier, a decrease of 3.85% . The problem is that in addition to this decline, the absenteeism rate exceeded 22% in July, with 75,000 employees declared absent.
This overall portrait also conceals an even harsher reality in certain regions. In particular in Lanaudière, where there was a 7.8% drop in the workforce compared to July 2021 and an absenteeism rate approaching 23%.
We are experiencing the same stampede in eastern Quebec, explains Alexandre Pelletier, president of the Union of nursing and cardiorespiratory care professionals of Bas-Saint-Laurent. The region’s network staff roster in July was down 700 from 9,600 12 months ago. “Working conditions are increasingly harsh, not to say mediocre. Many units are understaffed. There is a private leak. Even young nurses who have just arrived leave after a year or two,” he says.
Absenteeism and thinning ranks
The region’s health system has to resort to staff from private agencies, which come to thin out its own ranks by offering more enviable working conditions to young recruits, adds the nurse.
The absenteeism rate has also been between 20% and 25% in recent months in Bas-Saint-Laurent, and has boosted the use of agency staff (12% of paid hours) and compulsory overtime (TSO) . “I even have colleagues who quit their jobs to go to work at Walmart! They couldn’t take the TSO any longer, the pressure, and not knowing when they were going to come home,” says Alexandre Pelletier.
The situation is also tense in the Outaouais, where the workforce has decreased by 5% in one year and where 12% of the hours worked by nursing staff are overtime.
In Mauricie, absenteeism (22% in July) exacerbates the scourge of the lack of personnel and the use of overtime, abounds Patricia Mailhot, interim president of the Union of healthcare professionals of Mauricie and Centre-du-Quebec. “I would even tell you that the official figures on overtime are sometimes distorted, because the number of nurses required on the units is cut. That way, we no longer have to ask for overtime for unfilled shifts. »
“We end up with three nurses on a unit that should have five, and patient ratios that explode. You have to have eyes everywhere. What would it be like if a teacher or daycare worker suddenly found herself with 50 children in a group? she raises.
According to Mme Mailhot, not a day goes by without dozens of nurses resigning in Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec. According to her, poor management of recall lists partly explains the excessive use of the TSO. “Sometimes, we force the nurse already on site to do OSI, she says, when we could have found someone who agreed to do it voluntarily if we had taken the time to go through the recall list. »
Although less glaring in large centers such as Montreal (3.8%), the loss of personnel and the use of OSIs hit certain critical care units, such as emergency and intensive care, harder, and certain CIUSSSs more than others. others. The metropolis has lost more than 4,200 employees in one year. At the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, bloodletting reached 7.4%, and more than 6% at the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal and du Centre-Sud- of-the-Island-of-Montreal.
The Quebec City region seems to be doing better, with a general decrease in the number of employees limited to 3.85%, but the loss of personnel reached almost 8% in the establishments of the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale, outside the large hospitals.