Public health care system in critical condition
Crushing workloads are putting people at risk, Barbara Cape says.
Saskatchewan people take pride in our role as the pioneers of Medicare. But the public health care system we take for granted has reached a critical point.
Our population is growing and aging, with increasingly complex care needs. Our governments have not made the necessary investments to serve these growing needs. Federal health transfers have not kept pace, and provincial funding remains driven by the ongoing narrative of a tight fiscal budget.
This growing imbalance between needs and funding has become critically apparent on the front lines, in the form of understaffing.
As a quick fix for budget pressures, health managers are routinely leaving positions vacant when staff quit or retire, or not replacing staff who are on leave. They also refuse to add baseline staff to units whose numbers and needs have increased.
The result: crushing workloads that put the health and safety of patients, clients, residents and health care workers at risk.
Urgent action is needed. And the responsibility to act belongs to all of us.
SEIU-WEST represents health care providers across Saskatchewan, including licensed practical nurses, continuing care assistants, medical imaging and lab technologists, trades and maintenance, dietary, administrative and environmental services staff, among others. They are skilled and dedicated professionals working under high pressure to provide strong public services.
With increasing frequency, our members report that understaffing is harming their ability to provide safe care: patients and residents regularly left in bed because there aren’t enough staff to safely lift them; 15 residents not getting baths because there is only one staff person to bathe them; two staff on the night shift caring for 42 residents in a rural facility; and meals being cold because there aren’t any cooks.
The physical and mental stress of crushing workloads is harming our members’ concentration and sleep. They have high rates of back, shoulder, wrist and knee injuries and high numbers of worker compensation claims. Working in health care has become unsafe for too many.
This crisis has been building for 20 years. While I would love to lay full blame on governments or health managers, the fact is we are all responsible. We stopped paying attention; we stopped owning our responsibility as the custodians of Medicare.
We need to invest in more front-line staff and stop the focus upon cutting labour costs through understaffing. Managers will reply that it is difficult to recruit and retain skilled staff. Recruiting staff to such a chaotic health care system is indeed challenging. But it is possible. Creating a safe care environment through staffing increases will improve quality of care and health outcomes.
A crucial part of the solution is to settle a collective agreement that fairly recognizes the contributions health care workers make. Governments and health system leaders need to be bold enough to make the investment needed to reach this agreement with SEIU-WEST.
To achieve this, we need to write and call Premier Moe and the ministers of health and rural and remote health, and get our families and friends to do the same. We need to demand that politicians recognize the seriousness of the understaffing crisis.
I challenge you to talk with the health care providers you encounter. Ask them how understaffing affects their ability to get their job done — the job they do for you and your loved ones. Then add your voice to theirs. Public health care belongs to all of us, and the time to act is now.