Registered nurses show up to challenge roles of LPNs
We know you don’t like it. But what are you doing about it?
That question, fired by an angry registered nurse at Linda WaskoLacey, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Registered Nurses, set the tone for an extraordinary SRNA public meeting, held Friday in Regina.
It was called in response to a petition, signed by hundreds of Saskatchewan RNs, asking what the SRNA plans to do about controversial new bylaws, accepted by the provincial government in December, covering the practice of licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and related employer practices.
Legal jostling between RNs and LPNs is nothing new. It’s been going on via newspaper letters columns and social media for more than a decade. But Friday, it went public with a meeting that packed hundred of nurses into Regina’s Tartan Curling Club.
So keen was interest that cars and buses from outside the city filled parking spaces and lots for blocks around the east Regina curling club, which was packed well before before the meeting. The proceedings were live streamed on the SRNA’s website. In the wings was a “facilitator” introduced as being there to help keep the meeting on focus.
RN after RN came to the microphones in the cavernous club to press the SRNA to do more, citing the possibility of critical incidents that endanger patient safety, all because of confusion over what RNs and LPNs do in the health-care system.
Wasko-Lacey replied with the SRNA’s plans for engaging stakeholders and educating them on the of roles of the groups it regulates: RNs and RN-nurse practitioners.
SRNA legal adviser Roger Lepage offered his analysis that the government did nothing outside of its powers when it OK’d the expanded role for LPNs.
As for the government, the health minister and his deputy were invited, but declined, the latter expressing his confidence RNs will collaborate “with other members of the health-care team. “
But in reply to the questioner mentioned above, Wasko-Lacey said the SRNA is a professional disciplinary body with a role to “protect patients from bad nurses.”
Among those in the audience was Tracy Zambora, president of the SRNA’s counterpart, the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, which bargains for nurses in negotiations with the province’s health regions.
In an interview, she conceded there might be some misunderstanding of SRNA’s role, but said the big factor at work Friday was RNs’ frustration with a health-care system with more and more LPNs being hired to do the work of RNs with more education.
And as a result, the nurses at Friday’s meeting believe the SRNA is “abrogating their responsibility to protect the public.”
“We know that what happens right now is that licensed practical nurses are being allowed to move into areas that are specialty practice for RNs.”
Zambora added there are lots of things that people can learn on the job or through years of experience, “Nobody’s arguing that. But specialty practice are not those things,” she said, adding the typical LPN has 27 credit hours of education, versus 120 for an RN.
Saying that LPNs are important members the health-care team, she offered a comparison: pharmacy assistants do important work too, but a patient “always wants to speak to a pharmacist “about the important, in-depth educational things that are required.”
Zambora’s theory of what happening? It might be financial pressure on regional health authorities. “They’re going to do what they can to changes these bylaws and competency profiles without the educational foundation and research in evidence. In the end, it’s patients who are going to suffer.”