The cry from the heart of the emergency room nurses at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont seems to have been heard. In a press briefing on Tuesday, the president and CEO of the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal Jean-François Fortin Verreault indicated that the unit head whose nurses were asking for the immediate resignation would be reassigned to another function. “We’re going to change the dynamic with the team,” he said.
Nearly a hundred emergency nurses and nursing assistants signed a petition demanding the immediate resignation of their unit head, otherwise they threatened to resign on Wednesday. The signatories denounce the too frequent recourse to compulsory overtime (TSO) and the “toxic atmosphere” which has prevailed since the arrival of their head of unit. The document was delivered to the CEO on Friday.
“Since his appointment as head of the HMR emergency last July, we have seen a dazzling deterioration in our working conditions, they argue in the petition. The number of TSOs is constantly growing and this encourages our team members to leave, thus creating more than deplorable working conditions. The nurses and nursing assistants add that they no longer have “any confidence in the management and leadership abilities” of their unit head.
Asked about the head of the unit concerned, the CEO of the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal repeated in a press briefing that he did not want to “personalize the debate”. He added that “the situation is extremely difficult” at HMR and that the “person in question” is not responsible for the fact that the hospital receives more patients than its capacity. The manager will remain in the employ of the establishment, he specified, but will occupy other functions.
The Maisonneuve-Rosemont emergency room had to be partially closed last night due to a lack of personnel. The evening shift nurses refused to work under the conditions offered by the employer and went on a sit-in.
Jean-François Fortin Verreault ensures that the emergency will be fully open tonight. “The goal is to keep the emergency open,” he said.
The Minister of Health Christian Dubé must take stock this afternoon of the crisis which is shaking the emergency room. He said on Twitter last night that he had met Jean-François Fortin Verreault. “The emergency situation at HMR is currently untenable, I am aware of that,” he wrote. “Our priority is to ensure the safety of all patients,” he continued. That’s why we made the difficult decision to limit activities to the emergency room for this night. »
More details will follow.