UNA Local 43 Vice-President Thomas Edwards says they were at the Olds Hospital and Care Centre from 11am until 1pm on July 23rd and the rally included about 70 to 80 participants. He says “they can definitely be effective because they are a good visualization of people that, when you go into a hospital you are not seeing every single person that works in that facility. You are not seeing every single Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), you are not seeing every single Registered Nurse (RN). The health care aids, the kitchen workers, the environmental service workers, the lab techs. So having a large group out on the sidewalk, that shows you these people are in the facility providing the care every day. These people are the ones that are struggling, they are struggling to make ends meat, and they are struggling in their work places to give the care that everyone needs.”
So for UNA, Edwards notes one of the demands in their bargaining package was to request things like staffing levels in an Intensive Care Unit on a ventilated patient have to be a one to one ratio for registered nurses. He says “an ICU non-ventilated patient is two to one and a step down even is three to one. In an acute care unit, which is what we are seeing in things like the Olds Hospital, has to be no more than a four to one ratio. Whereas at times we are seeing five, six, seven, or eight to one. Eight patients to one nurse. That is just really impacting the amount of care people can provide. It cuts down on the number of hours they are getting from their nurses, the number of treatments they can get. The side care, like bathing, dressing, cleaning. All of those things are becoming secondary when we don’t focus on this high quality patient care.”
