I have been in a care unit at a Montreal hospital for over a month. In this care unit, each actor works together to ensure the healing of patients. Everyone knows their role, everyone does specialized work that requires attention, knowledge, ability to work in a team, empathy.
In my care unit, nurses are the vital, essential element that provides care. One of their functions is of course to administer medications, but above all, they ensure continuity of care and the smooth running of treatments. Before each treatment, they ask us about side effects and our feeling of well-being. They know the side effects of treatments and must alert doctors in the event of a problem.
They must know how the hospital’s software works and fill out a host of reports for each patient. Before administering medications, they check our name, the dose to be administered, and the infusion rates. This information is cross-checked by another nurse according to the care protocol. A mistake could have very serious consequences.
Each nurse is a professional who knows she is responsible for her actions and who acts accordingly. The nurses take care of me and the other patients with all possible empathy. To them, we are not numbers and, for my part, I understand that they are the essential agents of my care and healing. Currently in my care unit the nurses are understaffed, and must fill the gaps.
The care unit also includes doctors, a pharmacy, a blood test center and other services. Each of its members acts in synergy with the rest of the team. It becomes obvious to those who attend a care unit that nurses cannot be moved from one care unit to another without notice, without training, since they perform specialized tasks.
In my care unit, a minimum of six weeks of training is necessary, but learning is continuous. Since nurses are health professionals, they should be able to object to a transfer if they do not consider themselves competent to provide care. Doesn’t acting otherwise jeopardize the quality of care?
An affront
The current government has insulted union members with scandalous salary offers and forced them to strike. It is the workers, the patients and the population who suffer from the government’s lack of vision and its incompetence in matters of labor relations. It would have been so easy to start the negotiation earlier. It would have been fair to assure all union members an adjustment to the real consumer price index which would have stabilized the workforce for many years.
But this government has the presumption to include tax cuts in the calculation of its offers, which prevent it from paying its employees! This government has not understood the fatigue and fed up of caregivers, educators and the population. If the demands, about which he prides himself on efficiency and flexibility, are imposed on union members, health professionals will no longer agree to provide care in increasingly degraded and stressful conditions. Their mental health and sense of professionalism are at stake.
The government adds to the stress of the negotiation the adoption of law 15. This law favors the notion of services and users over the notion of care and patients. It breaks the unity within healthcare services. She wants to repatriate nurses from agencies, but create private hospitals which will siphon off nursing resources. By merging establishments, allowing the transfer of resources to other establishments, and eliminating the role of unions in scheduling management, it aims to make Santé Québec a private employment agency. It follows the line of the CAQ mode of governance: loss of professional control, loss of local democracy, imposition of solutions from above, increase in bureaucracy, centralization.
Can we really entrust a government and a minister incapable of solving the problems of the front line with a reform which arouses neither support nor consensus? I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart the nurses who care for me, as well as the entire team in MY care unit. These professionals and the entire team of the care unit do not need yet another reform, but rather care, listening, attention, a reduction in their workload.
They want and I want their work and their professionalism to be valued and paid at their fair value. Is this too much to ask? Is it because these professionals are mostly women that the government does not want to hear their requests and demands?
None of the people who treat me run a hospital or clinic. If the health network still functions, it is because of their work, their involvement, their skills and their professionalism. But it is the mark of the incompetent to blame others for their own turpitudes, inabilities and helplessness.
The Prime Minister’s incoherent and untimely statements as well as his insulting offers are the mark of his lack of vision, ignorance of the field and his inability to take the pulse of his employees and the population. He has recklessly steered us toward a major social crisis. For that I do not excuse him. His apology won’t be necessary this time.