Nurses have always been overworked in the health system and not only have their abilities been abused, but also their sense of responsibility and professionalism: “If you don’t stay for another shift tonight, who will take care of Mr. So and Mrs.me So-and-so from your unit, who are seriously ill? As if it was the nursing staff’s fault that they are understaffed and under-resourced.
They have been shouldered with full responsibility for the provision of health care without ever being provided with the necessary means, equipment, budget, premises and assistant staff. And when there is a shortage of staff, they are forced to work excessive compulsory overtime. Try to impose these working conditions and this repetitive TSO on a construction union to see… unthinkable!
I would have liked to see how the secretaries of the hospital directors could have carried out their duties with an old mechanical typewriter stuck, the lack of paper and basic office supplies, a fax machine rather than emails and a system outdated, complex and unsuitable computing. Yet that’s what hospital staff do every day despite budget cuts, understaffing, lack of supplies, and continual exposure to unquantifiable human drama.
They have been chronically underpaid and as a result few women and men want to dive into this immensely demanding job, under very difficult conditions and with no hope of improvement in the short term.
It is also terrible to see a generation of seniors paying the price of a society that neglects them. It took an exceptional and terrible situation to open our eyes in a very, very cruel way. Remember: we are all seniors in the making.
Thank you for highlighting this situation and I sincerely hope that nurse Sarah Bachand and all her colleagues will recover from this ultramarathon that no one should be forced to run.