RPN nurses say they deserve pay hike
Adjustments made by province can mean support workers are paid more than their bosses during pandemic
As a registered practical nurse, Stefanie MacLeod knows first-hand how much personal support workers (PSWs) need and deserve their $3 per hour raise the province announced recently.
“They’re vastly underpaid and have been for years,” she said.
However, she said PSWs aren’t the only underpaid health-care workers in the province.
As a result of the temporary wage increase, meant to help attract and retain PSWs needed to meet the demands placed on health-care and long-term care industries by the COVID-19 pandemic, MacLeod said PSWs in some cases now earn almost the same wages as RPNs, and in some cases they could earn more.
“The wage difference between a new
RPN and a PSW is 50 cents, that’s how much more an RPN makes.”
She said RPNs have far more responsibility than PSWs have — including administering medication, providing wound treatments, monitoring a patient’s condition, responding to critical incidents and often working with physicians and other health care professionals.
It’s a job that also requires two and a half years of education and is regulated by the College of Nurses of Ontario.
Meanwhile, MacLeod said the scope of practice and workload continues to increase for RPNs, especially since the pandemic began.
“With COVID, we have all these extra duties to perform. Why are we getting left out of the $3 raise. I get it that (Premier) Doug Ford is trying to recruit PSWs,” she said, adding the PSWs are also being offered a $5,000 incentive to if they commit to working for six-months at eligible long- term care homes.
“What a slap in the face.” Home Care Ontario chief executive officer Sue VanderBent shared the concerns.
Although her organization welcomed the recent announcement of the PSW wage increases, she said her organization has also lobbied for increased wages for all homecare professionals — including RPNs.
“That’s something the association advocated strongly for, because as much as our PSWs absolutely need that increase, so do others who work so hard in the health care sector,” VanderBent said. “It’s that compression of wages when you give one group only in a sector an increase — well deserved, absolutely — but then others who also are deserving are left out.”
MacLeod teamed up with fellow RPN Irena Curado to share their concerns about the wage disparity.
In an email sent to the St. Catharines Standard, they pointed out there will now be many RPNs working as supervisors of PSWs who will make more money than they do.
Curado set up an online petition calling for increased wages for RPNs as well, that has already garnered more than 4,730 signatures from people across the province, Canada and worldwide in the three days since it was launched.
The petition also received several messages of support from other health-care professionals, including a retired registered nurse who pointed out that RPNs are often called on to do the same work as registered nurses, without adequate compensation.
Registered nurses can make as much as $20 more per hour than RPNs, MacLeod said.