The three opposition parties in the National Assembly insisted on Friday on the importance of putting in place “structuring measures” to attract professionals within the health network, in a context where the current bonuses have mixed effects .
The duty has published the report, region by region, of the reinforcements that have arrived in the network since the announcement, in September, of financial incentives to attract and retain nurses. He further revealed that the number of new graduates is factored into the bonus effect updates that the Department of Health publishes on a weekly basis.
In some regions, such as Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the effect of bonuses is marginal: the Integrated Health and Social Services Center (CISSS) has hired 7 nursing assistants – including 5 from the private sector – since the announcement. bonuses. The establishment indicates that 46 employees have increased their hours and occupy a full-time position.
“We are far from the figure of 4000 [recrues] advanced by the Minister of Health for all of Quebec. We are far from being able to provide the services we want, that we must offer to citizens everywhere across Quebec, ”said Liberal MP André Fortin about the Abitibian situation.
In his opinion, the network needs “structuring measures”, and not “half-measures”. “When we take a measurement once, it does not have the same structuring impact, it does not have the same impact on people’s behavior, and that is why we, what we are proposing, is is to have better working conditions in the work environment, but for regions where there are particularities, such as mine [l’Outaouais], longer-term measures. “
” Lack of transparency “
At Québec solidaire, MP Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said he did not know that new graduates were included in the statistics. “It’s great creative accounting, to say the least,” he said.
The duty asked all establishments to obtain an assessment of the reinforcements hired since September. A total of 26 offered a response. About half of these gave figures on the origin of new employees (private sector or retirement), such as The Duty l‘asked.
“The lack of transparency in the Quebec health system is not news,” Nadeau-Dubois said on this subject. “It is a structural problem which is directly linked to liberal centralization, which is part of this culture of authoritarian management,”top down ”, often contemptuous of employees, which is that of the Quebec system. We have to break that culture. “
The PQ member Joël Arsenault also stressed that it was “not easy to get the overall picture of the situation”.
“But what we remember is the whole work. The government, rather than changing the way hospitals operate, to vote for the abolition of “compulsory overtime”, it wanted to offer bonuses and obviously that does not work. Or it doesn’t work as well as we would like, ”he continued. He called on the government to “truly commit” to no longer using employment agencies or compulsory overtime. “It is structuring solutions like these that will be more attractive to nurses. “