The number of nurses continues to grow in Quebec, but they have never been so overworked. The pandemic is not the only culprit.
“Although there are a lot of nurses in Quebec, a large number are resting at home, have decided not to work full time or have decided to do something else while keeping their licence,” explains the president of the Association of Intensive Care Nurses of Quebec, Caroline Riopel.
Despite the arrival, each year, of thousands of fresh forces, these reinforcements do little to ease the tension on the network, specifies Guillaume Fontaine, president of the Board of Directors of the Association of Emergency Nurses of Quebec.
“The nurses relieved in certain sectors to work in the emergency room do not necessarily have the expertise to do so. The emergency room is not an environment where you can train a nurse in three weeks. Rather, it takes two to three years. [Leur formation] puts additional pressure on nurses with more experience. »
Consequence: there are between four and seven patients per nurse in the emergency room, very close to the maximum allowed.
Obviously, the burden of COVID-19 patients in already nearly full hospitals has upset the balance necessary for the well-being of nurses. Since March 2020, Quebec has authorized managers to cancel the holidays of health care workers, to force them to work full time or to move them from one unit to another.
“Nurses must be able to continue to train, to go to congresses, to be in contact with different experiences. That too is one of the winning conditions, pleads Caroline Riopel. Currently, we do less training, because there are fewer of them and we are less able to free ourselves to follow training. It’s hard to keep our skills up to date. »
Beyond the creaking system, there is this wear and tear gnawing at healthcare workers after 22 months of struggles at the front lines. “There is a kind of discouragement, a collective fatigue”, says Guillaume Fontaine
“The pandemic has exhausted our nurses”, blows in turn Caroline Riopel.
This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus mail” of January 24, 2022. To subscribe, click here.