Nurses can help save our system
Doctors have been all over the news concerning Bill 20, but nurses will also be directly affected by it.
Primary care is the heart and soul of nursing. We are the gatekeepers, the protectors. The care we are able to provide in primary care is a determining factor in whether persons are able to continue on their healing journey or end up in the hospital. We know hospitals are unhealthy. Nurses fight every day to make their workplaces safe for their patients. We are experts at circumventing regulations or new cutbacks to maintain access and quality of care. Bills 10 and 20 are beginning to make this expertise insufficient. We cannot be invisible actors anymore.
Our expertise in health, healing, administration, as well as being allowed to work within our full scope of practice, must be recognized by the government if there is any chance these reforms will work. Family doctors do not, should not, and cannot bear the brunt of responsibility in primary care. Vaccinations, pap tests, diabetes evaluations, psycho- social assessments, pregnancy follow- up, pediatric care and more should be done by nurses. Next time you see a nurse, ask him or her: “How much more could you be doing that current regulations don’t permit?” You better be sitting down when she answers.
Our health- care system as we know it is dying. Nurses must step forward to save it. We can do it. Nursing is also in danger and with it the fundamental values of our health- care system. We have been holding up this system for long enough.
The research is there, abundant, demonstrating how we can have universal health care without bankrupting our state. Our policy- makers have been ignoring this evidence for decades, eroding the very spirit of health care, turning it into a disease- care system. If our profession is to flourish, it’s time to take a stand. Health can be accessible, we know it. We want you to know it, too. Natalie Stake- Doucet ( RN, BN, MSC student in the nurse practitioner- primary care stream, McGill University, Ingram School of Nursing), Montreal