COMMENTARY: P.E.I. nurses raising alarm

Barbara Brookins is the President of the Prince Edward Island Nurses’ Union and Linda Silas is the President of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

All through our careers, now we have by no means seen the excessive turnover throughout the well being system we see as we speak. Nurses in P.E.I. are altering positions each two to 5 years and it’s troublesome to take care of groups with numerous experiences. When new employees arrive, the senior nurses are not accessible to mentor and help them by way of probably overwhelming new experiences to offer the very best take care of our sufferers. Too typically, we see items staffed completely by folks with lower than three years’ expertise.

Nurses are drained, pissed off and so they really feel disrespected. They work brief staffed and are denied their much-needed time without work. Lately, I spoke with a Registered Nurse in her late 50s who works in an working room in P.E.I. This place requires being on standby two nights per week and each fourth weekend – which is 10 days of standby a month. Final week she labored an extra 33 hours on prime of her common full-time hours. She has 100 hours banked and applies for time without work commonly with out success. That’s unsustainable and a serious contributing issue to her deciding to retire on the finish of this 12 months, at the very least six years sooner than initially deliberate.

When a nurse leaves work on the finish of every day they’re left feeling like they wanted extra time to finish the naked minimal of affected person care. We see a continuing erosion of job satisfaction.

This disaster has been years within the making. Even earlier than the pandemic, burnout charges amongst nurses have been excessive. Greater than 60 per cent skilled some signs of burnout, whereas virtually 30 per cent have been experiencing medical burnout. Because the pandemic, these numbers have elevated to 94 per cent of nurses experiencing burnout, with virtually half now categorised as medical, which means they want mental-health helps. The very folks Islanders rely on to take care of them, are not capable of take care of themselves.

In consequence, many nurses are quitting, and positions aren’t being stuffed. Nurse vacancies elevated by 133 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the identical interval in 2021. Now greater than half of all nurses in Canada are contemplating leaving their present place within the subsequent 12 months, together with 19 per cent who’re contemplating leaving nursing altogether.

For months, hospitals have been compelled to chop companies or shut down complete departments due to shortages of nurses and medical doctors. Wait occasions for life-saving therapies and surgical procedures proceed to climb. And our ageing inhabitants continues to have much less and fewer entry to high quality care. Concerted authorities motion is urgently wanted to show the tide and stem the exodus of nurses from the system.

For starters, we have to restore hope in two methods. First, by giving them a lightweight on the finish of the tunnel with agency timelines and actual accountability for bettering nurse-patient ratios. Meaning funding confirmed applications to retain and recruit extra nurses, together with returning those that have left the career. And funding for extra nursing seats, bridging applications, new mentorship initiatives, and help for transitioning internationally educated nurses. And second, by offering rapid and ongoing help for nurses’ psychological well being applications.

Nursing has all the time been a troublesome job. Folks go into the career for that very motive as a result of they need to assist folks and aren’t afraid of a problem. The issue is it’s not a troublesome job anymore, it’s an not possible one. Canada’s nurses are among the strongest, most resilient folks we all know. They’ve seen nice hardship and struggling of their sufferers, so they don’t ask for assist frivolously. And if we don’t take rapid motion, we threat struggling a system-wide failure of our treasured common public well being care system.

Premier King has been listening to nurses. For years, Canada’s premiers have been asking the federal authorities to extend well being transfers to allow them to make these critically wanted investments into nursing. Subsequent week, federal, provincial, and territorial governments will assemble on the Council of the Federation assembly to debate healthcare.

Our message has by no means been clearer. Prince Edward Island and Canada’s healthcare system is on the point of disaster. We should repair the dire scarcity of nurses.