Nurses at Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert are no longer immune to conditions that have plagued rural and large facilities for years.
Nurses at Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert are no longer immune to conditions that have plagued rural and large facilities for years.
As National Nurses Week 2024 approaches, hallway nursing is the norm at Sturgeon, and the neonatal intensive care unit is chronically overstaffed.
St. Albert's nurses can no longer provide the care they were trained to provide. Most people leave their jobs at the end of their careers, feeling the pain of the care they were unable to provide. Many feel burnt out, and some are so frustrated that they are forced out of the hospital or out of the nursing profession altogether.
This year, Nursing Week runs from May 6th to May 12th. Nursing Week is an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of nurses and the nursing profession to the well-being of all Canadians.
Members of the Alberta Nurses Federation will celebrate 550 local nurses on May 14 at Sturgeon Community Hospital.
Our celebration will be delayed as our union conducts negotiations during Nursing Week. On May 7, the union's bargaining team addressed the allegations of bad faith bargaining that our union filed against Alberta Health Services at the Labor Committee.
Nursing is a 24/7 profession, so it's only fitting that we celebrate Nursing Week a little late. Due to the nature of shift work, nurses are used to celebrating when they can. They celebrate holidays and birthdays with their families when they have time off, and Nursing Week is no different.
Celebrate with a pizza party and prizes for nurses. We meet at noon during the day shift and have meals delivered to the nurses who work in the evening and at night. There's no missing a shift either.
Pizza and prizes are great, but what nurses really want during Nurses Week is a fair collective bargaining agreement.
Above all, Sturgeon nurses want respect and safe staffing.
Respect means paying nurses what they are worth. Safe staffing means we need to invest in putting more nurses on the front lines.
Safe staffing means having enough nurses to ensure patient safety.
But in addition to staffing shortages, mandatory overtime and limited vacation time, nurses in Alberta are no longer paid the same as nurses in other provinces such as British Columbia and Ontario. Recruiting and retaining nurses in this state will require adequate compensation as we compete for talent amid a global nursing shortage.
The current government doesn't seem to understand health care (as evidenced by the dismantling of AHS), but it does understand supply and demand. Nurses are in high demand and in limited supply.
This Nurses Week, you don't have to worry about a pizza party. That's resolved.
If you really want to show your gratitude to nurses, tell AHS to negotiate in good faith and tell the Alberta government to continue investing in public health care.
Appeal to the government to give nurses fair compensation and stop reckless layoffs.
What nurses really need is a government that respects nurses, keeps the nurses we have, and focuses on recruiting more nurses to Alberta.
By focusing on these three things, Alberta's nurses can get back to their jobs. We provide quality, compassionate and safe care to Albertans.
Orissa Sima is a registered nurse at Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert and president of the Alberta Local 85 United Nurses.
