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By Dylana Kneeshaw

HOSPITAL STAFF STRAIN

B.C. Nurses Union calling for improved health care worker supports

Feb 8, 2021 | 4:26 PM

KAMLOOPS — The B.C. Nurses Union says health authorities in the province need to re-evaluate the duties of over-worked nurses and make sure they’re equipped to keep working safely.

As they work through COVID-19 outbreaks, the union says frontline nursing staff need this extra support more than ever. In Kamloops, there have been 66 COVID-positive employees associated to the Royal Inland Hospital outbreak. Union President Christine Sorensen says understaffing has become an extremely concerning issue.

“We were already struggling in the past for lowest number per capita of nurses in place,” she notes. “We’ve now been going through a pandemic and we have nurses who are off sick with COVID, we have nurses who are off because they have to provide child or elder care because of COVID also. We have nurses who are isolating because they’ve been named as contacts of someone with COVID.”

According to provincial health orders, if nurses and other essential healthcare staff waiting for test results are asymptomatic, they may continue to work. Sorensen acknowledges that this is not ideal, but it is necessary to keep healthcare facilities operating.

“In reality, if every nurse who went to have a test was asked to stay home until their test results came back, we may have nobody working.”

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Sorensen says nurses in Kamloops are doing what they can to protect others, but they don’t have unfettered access to the personal protective equipment (PPE) needed.

“That is a concern for us in large outbreaks. We do know that asymptomatic spread happens,” Sorensen explains. “But nurses will mask, they don their PPE and they do everything possible to reduce the spread of this virus to their other colleagues but more importantly to the patients that they’re caring for.”

Along with adequate PPE supplies, the nurses union is asking health authorities to step up support for workers on the front lines.

“They also need supports in regards to alleviating some of the non-nursing duties that they’re doing. Some of the clerical or administrative work, some of the housekeeping/dietary work that really could be done by others — thereby freeing up nurses and giving them more time.”

As outbreaks continue to appear, BCNU has asked the Ministry of Health to work with them to re-evaluate working conditions for essential healthcare providers.