VIDEO: ‘We can’t take it anymore’: Canadian nurses take to streets of Charlottetown

CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Greater than 1,000 nurses took to the streets of Charlottetown on June 9 to protest workers shortages throughout the nation.

Members of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) assembled exterior the P.E.I. Conference Centre and marched up Queen Road, winding their method down Grafton and Prince streets to Confederation Touchdown Park the place the CFNU held what it known as a “Dying for Protected Staffing” rally.

All of the nurses stretched out on the bottom, with sufficient attending to virtually fill the park. A second of silence was noticed for the 95,000 nurses in Canada who contracted the COVID-19 virus throughout the pandemic and the 93 nurses who died from the virus.

Pauline Worsfold, an government member of the CFNU, additionally requested the nurses to spend a second fascinated about nurses who’re experiencing psychological sickness, burnout and trauma due to working lengthy hours and never having sufficient assist throughout the previous couple of years.

“We’re right here to inform the remainder of the world we’re not going to take it anymore,” Worsfold, a nurse on the College Hospital in Edmonton, informed the group. “Nurses are leaving the occupation. They’re going, going, gone, and a few of our colleagues are dying for protected staffing – actually and figuratively. We are able to’t take it anymore.”

Worsfold stated nurses are holding the health-care system collectively by sheer will and willpower and by placing in extreme extra time. It has led to situations that aren’t protected to work in.

In an interview with SaltWire on June 8, Janet Hazelton, president of the Nova Scotia Nurses Union, stated staffing shortages have grown so dangerous that sufferers who’re ready longer than they need to to be examined are bodily lashing out at nurses.

Hazelton stated nurses are being spit on and struck, including that one of many nurses in her union that got here to the convention was nonetheless affected by a concussion as a result of being abused by a affected person.

Worsfold stated that’s why nurses are leaving the system and it’s why there should not sufficient nursing graduates popping out of colleges to switch the quantity leaving.

Shayna Conway, an ICU nurse on the Prince County Hospital in Summerside, stated she is already feeling her stress stage rising three years into her profession.

“It’s traumatizing for me and it’s traumatizing for (our sufferers),” Conway informed the group, who added that her unit is experiencing a doctor disaster the place there isn’t a internist within the intensive care unit.

“We’re working shorthanded in our ICU, being requested to stabilize and transport, working in (emergency), mentoring the physicians who’re coming in. Most of our workers is junior. We barely have any senior workers as a result of they’ve been leaving.”

Ken Speight, a registered nurse from Ottawa, additionally spoke, telling the nurses they will struggle again.

Speight stated the Ontario authorities and his hospital administration workforce deliberate to herald unregistered nurses to assist clear a backlog of circumstances created throughout the pandemic.

“They have been going to impose new unsafe staffing measures by bringing in new unregulated health-care staff to do the function as a scrub nurse, changing the nurses who had left,” Speight stated, referring to nurses who arrange the working room for the affected person, guarantee all of the instruments are sterile and hand instruments to the physician throughout surgical procedure.

Speight stated 4 hospitals in Ottawa went forward and introduced within the staff. Near 200 nurses at these hospitals fought the choice, which was reversed.

Speight inspired the nurses to maintain up the struggle in opposition to staffing shortages.

“That is an instance when nurses work collectively they’ve a strong voice and may make modifications,” he stated.

Linda Silas, president of CFNU, known as the rally on June 9 empowering.

“This was sobering and robust … to listen to these actual nurses inform the general public and the media how dangerous it’s in our office,” Silas stated.

At a look

• 9 provinces have been represented on the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions convention in Charlottetown, June 5-9:
• Quebec is just not a member of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union.
• Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut weren’t represented on the convention.

Dave Stewart is a well being reporter with SaltWire in Prince Edward Island. He might be reached by e mail at [email protected] and adopted on Twitter @DveStewart.