Nova Scotians Demand a Modern Health Care System Fit
for Human Beings
The Nova Scotia
Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU) organized a "Rally to
Raise the ALARM that Health Care for All Nova Scotians is in Crisis."
Prior to the rally at the Nova Scotia Legislature on April 3, Workers'
Forum interviewed NSGEU President
Jason MacLean on the aim of the action.
***
Workers' Forum: What is the aim
of the rally that you are holding on April 3?
Jason MacLean: We have organized
the rally to raise the alarm about the state of health care. Our
membership is demanding more advocacy happen and demanding that we be
heard at the Legislature. The McNeil government tabled its budget on
March 26 and we were hoping that there was going to be more funding in
it to support our frontline health care workers and social workers. The
budget is a huge disappointment, with truly not much new money for
health care and nothing for primary care, nothing to handle the
problems in home care, in long-term care and in the emergency
departments in hospitals.
Ultimately, we have issues throughout the health care
system. It starts at the emergency department where we have an over
abundance of people coming there, both because more people are in
poorer health today and, as well, many people do not have family
doctors and that is why they are going to emergency departments. This
is
overwhelming the emergency departments and people are being moved
around to other parts of the building so we have "hallway medicine."
Then, we have a shortage of health care professionals
including nurses, and on top of that we have an employer that began to
interpret overtime provisions differently in the last round of
bargaining. They are not paying people overtime at the same time as the
system is dependent on overtime hours. There are people working
overtime
constantly, but now they are only getting paid straight time because
they may have had a day off earlier in the pay period.
People are deterred from work; they do not want to work
because they do not feel valued at work, and on top of that they are
burnt out. Also, the severity level of patients is so high that more
people are being admitted to hospital. There have not been any new beds
in long-term care so people cannot be moved into long-term care so they
are
occupying beds in hospitals as well.
When people are sent home with home care there are not
enough Continuing Care Assistants (CCA); there are not enough home care
workers to be able to handle the load. Every agency is being told that
they cannot have a wait list but still people cannot get services they
need in time because there are not enough CCAs. Also, the way the
hours are organized, and the rate of pay, people tend to want to work
in an acute care setting or long-term care setting as opposed to
traveling across the city to people's homes to provide care.
We have a patient flow problem; we have too many
patients and nowhere to put them and nobody to care for them because
the people that care for them are being nickel and dimed by the
government and the employer. The health employer, the Nova Scotia
Health Authority (NSHA) is a colossal failure that Premier McNeil
created when
he came into power. In this Health Authority, one hand does not know
what the other hand is doing. The Health Authority is more worried
about the bottom line than patient care or the well-being of their
staff.
WF: What are your demands?
JM: We want to work with the
government. I have asked the Minister of Health to come to the
Emergency Department and shadow health care professionals in any
emergency department for a day or go on a unit and shadow a nurse for a
day and see what goes on there. He is trying to deal with the
offloading issues
that we have at hospitals where the paramedics are stuck at hospitals
waiting for a patient that they have brought in to be taken in instead
of being in the community picking up people. People are waiting up to 6
to 12 hours to get an ambulance. So far he has not responded. He has
not gone to an Emergency Department to see what goes on.
We are saying that we need more health care
professionals, we need more nurses, we need more CCAs, we need more
long-term care beds. We need a lot of attention brought to the health
care system in general, but you will never be able to fix any type of
backlog without people. We need more doctors as well. The professionals
themselves
and the system has been starved for so long, it is almost like they are
purposely trying to do it to make our province's health care system
ripe for privatization.
I know there are issues. I know that the government
knows there are issues, but they do not acknowledge the issues. They
have never acknowledged that there is a crisis in health care. You
cannot talk to a doctor, a nurse, a health care professional, anybody
that works in a hospital, without them telling you that this system is
in crisis. That is
why we are holding a two-hour rally in front of the Legislature and we
are bringing attention to the crisis in health care.
 
  
This article was published in
Number 12 - April
4, 2019
Article Link:
Nova
Scotians Demand a Modern Health Care System Fit for Human Beings
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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