Judy Junor appears composed, even feisty as she recalls the verbal sparring at a Nov. 20 meeting the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses held with the premier and the health minister.
The union president does not fit the frazzled image many nurses are portraying of themselves.
“A lot of nurses are extremely frustrated,” because all the hospital and seniors homes beds are full, yet the facilities are not staffed well enough, said Junor.
“Rural people think they are being forced to come to the city. They tell us.”
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Junor’s 6,000 SUN members work in most of the hospitals, health centres and nursing homes in Saskatchewan and have been bargaining since February for a contract with the 30 district health boards.
The media-savvy union launched a billboard and pamphlet campaign last month on the state of health care.
Junor said the nurses hoped the campaign would inform the government of the health system gaps seen by front-line staff. They handed out pamphlets at post offices, bingo halls and dropped them in Halloween bags.
Three weeks after the campaign started, SUN has received about 3,000 questionnaires back from the public, which it turned over to the politicians.
Problems encountered
Although the province added $40 million to the health budget in August, Junor said nurses are still finding problems in care.
Their union has identified patient safety as its top priority and wants to see better staffing levels in its next contract. The main items include the right of nurses to call in more staff in emergencies, replacement of staff who are off due to illness or injury and maintaining appropriate levels of registered nurses in all facilities.
Junor said many SUN members hold three part-time jobs because full-time RN positions have been cut, some replaced by lower paid nursing assistants.
“Nurses are leaving rural Saskatchewan if they can because there are no jobs, no opportunities. Or they’re traveling to other health districts and towns to work. Employers say they don’t have the cushion (of spare staff) they used to.”
Junor said she hopes the government takes SUN’s suggestions to heart.
One of the union’s proposed solutions would use specially trained nurses to relieve overworked and scarce doctors, especially in rural areas where nurses could do more of the simple work like suturing and giving needles. A nurse practitioner has been working under the doctor at Beechy in a year-long successful pilot project. While 50 such nurse practitioners have been trained, Junor said the health department and district boards are dragging their feet over who should pay to set them up.
Specially trained staff
SUN has also suggested staffing health centres on the Quebec model which has specially trained salaried employees offering most basic medical services.
As well, the nurses maintain the doctors’ fee-for-service system of payment costs the health system too much and that salary or other methods of pay are possible. This causes some rumbles from doctors who don’t want nurses poking into their business, but Junor says: “We don’t say how much doctors should be paid; we are concerned with how.”
Junor is exasperated little of the additional $40 million handed over by the province to the health boards appears to be going into staffing.
“They’re reshingling their roofs, buying computers. It’s frustrating.”
She suggested health boards take a look at their potential power and work with the public and critics like SUN to pry more money out of the province.
“The boards are afraid of government. They shouldn’t be.”
