REGINA — The issue of retaining health-care workers was back in the spotlight this week in Regina.
This week, the Association of Professional Nurses of Saskatchewan held its Nurse Retention Forum in Regina, focused on the topic. On Friday morning in front of the legislature, NDP health critic Meara Conway and CUPE 5430 president Bashir Jalloh were joined by two licensed practical nurses from Yorkton, Sandee Michalchuk and Darla Rugland, to again raise concerns about the retention issue, which has been a long-standing one in provincial politics.
“This week, these LPNs joined with other nurses across this province to discuss nothing but nurse retention in this province,” Jalloh said. “And this is something that we have been talking about for over four or five years.”
Jalloh said he personally had five meetings to talk to the Minister of Health about the crisis in retention in this province. But he said “what we continue to see is this government putting out programs, talking points.”
“We have heard about the Patient First initiative. We've heard about other initiatives by this government, but all of that cannot be done without paying attention to the root cause of the problem.”
Jalloh said health-care workers were leaving “because our wages are among the lowest in Western Canada.”
“And we have communicated that to this province. But they continue to give deaf ears to that. They continue to talk about plans. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything. So that is why we are here to talk about that today.”
Michalchuk, who has worked in nursing as a licensed practical nurse in Saskatchewan for 44 years, said she has seen firsthand the increased workloads and “how overwhelmed and burnt out the health-care workers are feeling.”
“They're being denied their vacations, mandated to work overtime. They're working short-staffed daily. We do it because we love our jobs and we want to do the best for the patients, but it's getting increasingly more difficult. As a result, the people are leaving.”
She pointed to one LPN who worked in the health-care system for nine years but quit her job and went into retail “because she said she just can't take it anymore.” She also pointed to others who left for Manitoba because of its new collective bargaining contract and monetary compensation.
“We were the highest-paid LPNs in the province and now we're the lowest-paid of any province,” said Michalchuk. “LPNs will continue to leave for Alberta, Manitoba and B.C., where the wages better reflect the work that they do. This is the heart of the retention crisis. In order to retain LPNs in the province, they must be respected, supported in their scope of practice and fairly compensated for the work that they do.”
Rugland said most nurses are “not leaving because they stop caring. They're leaving because they're tired. They're frustrated. They're burned out. They're working short. They're carrying workloads that are unimaginable. And many feel like they're fighting the system every day just to provide the care that we know that our patients deserve. That's not a nursing problem. That's a system problem.”
She said for nurses to stay, they need to “fix the conditions that are pushing them away. We need safe staffing. We need manageable workloads. We need workplaces free of violence and abuse. We need mentorship for new nurses. We need opportunities to practise to our full scope. And most importantly, we need decision-makers to listen to the people caring for the people at the bedside.”
Conway pointed to the NDP’s own Your Care, Your Say consultations with health-care workers and said what they heard from Michalchuk and Rugland is “consistent with what we've been hearing across the province.”
“That is that people are very concerned about their health-care system, especially health-care workers, because they bear witness to it every day. And they have watched it decline. And they are telling us that things have never been this bad.”
Conway said what they have heard is “this isn't a health-care provider problem. This is a system issue. And we need the government, the decision-makers, the policymakers to listen to these issues. After 20 years of the Sask. Party government, they need to own many of these issues that we see in health care.”
Michalchuk said the issue is that “we can bring in as many people as we want … But the point is about them staying. It's like a rotating door over and over again. You put all this money and all this investment in and then they leave. So why aren't they staying? We need the supplies. We need adequate staffing levels.”
They also raised questions about the Health Human Resources Action Plan and the money already spent on recruitment.
“And then we asked them, if you have recruited, if you have spent that amount of money to bring nurses here, where are the nurses?” said Jalloh. "Where are they? Why are we still having the same problem? Why is our problem compounded? It is like opening the front door for somebody to come in and opening the back door to leave.”
Jalloh also said that the trend before was for people to use Saskatchewan as a stepping stone, where they finish school, study in Saskatchewan, get the experience, look for higher wages and leave.
“But what we continue to see now is experienced, highly trained nurses, health-care professionals that are leaving. And like I said this before, I don't want to say nothing to Manitoba, but … we used to lose health-care workers to Alberta. But the trend we are seeing now, we are seeing people leaving for Manitoba. Why? Because Manitoba has just ratified, their government is making tangible efforts to acknowledge, respect and retain health-care workers. We see that, it is out there. We are not doing the same thing. That is why we see people now moving towards the east, as opposed to when we used to see people move out to Alberta. And that is concerning for us.”
In a statement Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill said it "was a great opportunity to attend the Nurse Retention Forum put on by the Association of Professional Nurses of Saskatchewan yesterday to talk and listen directly to nurses who are focused on solutions. Nurses play an important role in our health care system and we thank them for their ongoing work delivering high-quality patient care across the province."
"Negotiations are ongoing. We know the best deals are reached at the bargaining table and our government has asked that employers and unions sit down and work together to find solutions to achieve collective bargaining agreements.
Cockrill said his government will "continue to work on building a stronger, more robust health-care workforce through our Health Human Resources (HHR) Action Plan. Through recruitment, training and retention initiatives, our Plan ensures that Saskatchewan remains an attractive place for health-care professionals to live, work and build a career."
He also pointed to the new Patients First Health Care Plan outlining over 50 actions to ensure patients are "receiving the right care in the right place at the right time."
"These key actions include supporting the existing health care workforce by adding more training seats in multiple health disciplines and investing in nurse career progression initiatives. We are also improving the work environment by enhancing security services to protect patients, visitors and staff, supporting managers to enhance workplace culture and engagement, and investing in facility and equipment improvements.”
