The nurses who work evenings on the third floor of the Barrie Memorial Hospital, located in Ormstown in Montérégie, made a sit in for more than three hours on Thursday evening. They refused to do compulsory overtime (TSO) during the night, as was the case recently. “Last week, from Sunday to Sunday, the evening team did 11 night TSOs,” said one of them, Catherine Leblanc.
This sit in is a first at the Barrie Memorial Hospital, according to Mélanie Gignac, president of the Union of Healthcare Professionals of Montérégie-Ouest. “They said enough was enough,” she said. They wanted to be heard. »
Catherine Leblanc works full time. She claims to have done OST once a week for the past three weeks. “My colleagues did 1 or 2 a week,” she adds. We are really exhausted. Already on our evening shift, we are short of staff. »
According to the union, the evening shift should be made up of five nurses and two nursing assistants. Thursday evening, it had three nurses and three nursing assistants, he says.
“Here, when a nurse is missing, we replace her with two nursing assistants,” explains Mélanie Gignac. But you should know that a licensed practical nurse has limitations in her right to practice. She cannot assess patients. Mélanie Gignac regrets that the employer does not take into consideration the “heaviness of the cases” in its calculations.
The evening nurses, who were replaced by day nurses in OSI, returned to work around 7 p.m. “Thanks to the efforts of the departments concerned, solutions have been found to make up for absences from the night shift,” said Jade St-Jean, spokesperson for the CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest. Employees from other units have volunteered to provide additional time to support the team in the unit concerned and agency personnel have been called in to help. »
The CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest indicates that “the situation will remain difficult for the next few days and the teams are currently mobilized to find solutions”.
An earlier version of the text, which stated that nurses working night shifts at Barrie Memorial Hospital’s emergency department had a “sit-in”, has been modified. Rather, it was the nurses who work evenings on the third floor of the building who refused to work compulsory overtime.