Karine Landry has been a nurse for 20 years. She loves this profession, which she has practiced on several levels. Karine recently received an honorary mention for her work. The CISSS des Laurentides, her employer, has also just suspended her.
Posted at 7:30 p.m.
In a context where the shortage of nurses weighs down the health network, the saga of Karine Landry deserves to be told.
Karine therefore works in a “Family Medicine Group” in the Hautes-Laurentides (mainly at the GMF de la Lièvre). She has not worked in hospital nursing for over 15 years.
But now, the Laurentians are experiencing the same shortage of nurses as everywhere in Quebec: this threatens to create “service breakdowns” in the emergency and intensive care units of the Mont-Laurier hospital.
The CISSS des Laurentides has launched a call for nurses in FMGs, CHSLDs and home care to voluntarily fill positions at the hospital this summer.
There were volunteers, but not enough.
The CISSS therefore forcibly enlisted nurses to fill shifts at the hospital. This is called “involuntary displacement”, in bureaucratic jargon. A dozen nurses received these “conscription” notices, according to the unbureaucratic jargon.
Karine Landry is one of these conscripts. We put her on the schedule for a few shifts at the Mont-Laurier hospital, from now until the beginning of September.
But Karine refused.
Reason: it’s been more than 15 years since she set foot on a hospital floor to provide care. She doesn’t feel comfortable doing it. She is afraid of making mistakes, recalling that emergencies and intensive care are a specialty in nursing.
Remember that a nurse can also be held responsible for an error in the care provided, before the Order of Nurses.
The CISSS has therefore recently launched disciplinary proceedings against Karine Landry for refusing to work.
First opinion: no suspension.
Second opinion: a one-day suspension, which she has already served.
Third opinion: three-day suspension, to be served.
A fourth notice could result in up to five days of suspension.
The CISSS swears it has no choice but to suspend Karine Landry. We must avoid service disruptions, said Steve Desjardins, Director of Nursing. The hospital must have emergency and intensive care services. Then, there is an issue of fairness towards those who accepted to be conscripted: “The displaced persons who accepted reluctantly, they ask themselves: what do you do with those who refuse? »
Mr. Desjardins adds that if the CISSS had not forced these “involuntary trips”, perhaps the regular nurses at the hospital would not have had reinforcements. Maybe that would have made them more exhausted.
Well, we understand the dilemma.
But still, there is something deeply abhorrent about nurses being forced to carry the burden of 40 years of health care neglect on their shoulders.1. When it’s not TSO (compulsory overtime) that we shove down their throats2 for 30 years, we have forced others to go and work in specialized units, without training.
I am writing most of this column on Tuesday morning, August 23, 2022. Last weekend, in Montreal hospitals, emergencies imposed OSI on several nurses, who had to work eight hours longer than expected.
And just before writing the story of Karine, I listened to Paul Arcand’s interview with a nurse from the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital3 who testified to what she saw in the trenches. It’s appalling what these women are going through. It’s inhumane.
No wonder that across Quebec, thousands of nurses are resigning4to reorient oneself or to go for private treatment.
The downward spiral is typical: exhausted nurses in the public quit, which puts even more pressure on those who remain… Which leads to even more resignations.
Steve Desjardins illustrated the phenomenon well in an interview: “The nursing profession is stimulating, it attracts new applicants, but not in sufficient numbers. The result: there is a “deficit balance” of nurses ready to work.
In the interview, Steve Desjardins was direct and lucid. He was candid in his comments. I almost sympathized with him: here is a man who must patch the holes of 40 years of negligence in the face of the system, I imagined a man who tries to juggle 12 burning logs while doing the splits on two galloping horses…
I quote him, explaining the sprinkling of hospital shifts to several non-hospital nurses: “The strategy is to spread the misery…”
Precisely, the nurses of Quebec are disgusted to eat misery, even bureaucratically well-distributed misery. Karine Landry is one of them.
She was therefore suspended.
But how can you suspend a nurse who refuses to show up for a shift in a hospital to which she is not attached?
Good question, dear readers. We don’t pass you one.
Answer: by preventing him from working… in his GMF.
Yes, yes, you read correctly: suspended from the hospital, it is at the GMF that Karine Landry must serve her suspension.
What does Karine do at the GMF?
Well, she works on the front line, in her own way. When she takes care of patients who have urinary tract infections, for example – from the request for labs to the prescription – Karine saves these patients visits to the emergency room of which hospital, do you think?
Yes, from the Mont-Laurier hospital!
Another absurdity: Karine Landry is on the Mont-Laurier hospital schedule on Saturday and Sunday. Mandatory, she must therefore be on leave from her GMF the day before and the next day, Friday and Monday.
I hear from here the attentive reader: yes, but Karine refuses to do her Saturday and Sunday shifts, at the hospital, so she could work at the GMF on Friday and Monday…
Answer: No, she can’t. Prohibition to work at the GMF on Friday and Monday, because she is ghostly “on call” at the hospital on Saturday and Sunday!
Little irony of the saga, ending?
In the spring, the CISSS des Laurentides honored the work of ten nurses with an “Emeritus Recognition Award”. Karine was one of them.
One of the signatories of the Prize announcement: Steve Desjardins.