"We Want Reinforcements and Recognition for Our Frontline Work for the Past Nine Months"Julie Bouchard is President of the Saguenay--Lac-Saint-Jean Care Professionals Union, a member of the Interprofessional Health Care Federation of Quebec (FIQ). She represents 3,200 health care professionals including nurses, licensed practical nurses, respiratory therapists, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists. Workers' Forum: What are the main problems you are currently facing? Julie Bouchard: The major problem at the moment as far as we are concerned is the lack of personnel. There is a shortage of nurses, auxiliary nurses and respiratory therapists. This is due, among other things, to problems that predate the pandemic and that have obviously increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Before the pandemic, there was already a fairly significant shortage of health care professionals. In the region, attracting staff has always been quite difficult. You have to understand that if I go from Chicoutimi to work in Dolbeau, which is part of our Integrated Health and Social Services Centre (CISSS), I have about a two-hour drive. If I go from Chicoutimi to Quebec City, which is outside our region, it is also about a two-hour drive. Between the two, many people will favour going to work in Quebec City because there is a larger volume of care. Within the region, we have our large centres such as Chicoutimi, Jonquière and Alma, as well as smaller centres. If workers do not come from the villages and towns that are far from the large regional centres, they generally prefer to work in the large centres outside the region or obtain positions in the larger centres in the region at the expense of smaller centres where retention is even more difficult. Services have had to be reduced, or even shut down, in these smaller centres due to a lack of health care personnel, not a lack of doctors. Secondly, since we live in a region, the problem of progressing (for example, moving from part-time to full-time) makes retention more difficult. It is more difficult to keep our professionals who are already in the network because it is more difficult to us to advance in our jobs and we are not being heard. It seems that in the eyes of the Ministry of Health and Social Services or certain CISSS leaders, we should be self-sufficient with the amount of staff we have while in fact the management mode here is to operate on the basis of mandatory overtime. Mandatory overtime is imposed on us on an almost daily basis.
WF: Can you explain how, under the conditions of the pandemic, the problems have worsened? JB: The problems escalated fairly quickly because, in order to protect vulnerable workers, pregnant women and immunosuppressed workers had to be removed, resulting in the loss of about 100 health care professionals. Even before the pandemic, the rate of absenteeism here, for physical or psychological reasons, was very high -- we are talking about a rate of about 12 to 14 per cent before the pandemic. Since the second wave, the entire territory here has been affected with outbreaks in hospitals, residential and long-term care centres (CHSLDs) and seniors' residences. We have a very serious shortage of health care personnel because so many have contracted the virus. We are also facing the problem of ministerial orders. There are three aspects of these that affect us very much. The first is the forced increase in full-time availability. Virtually all of the health care professionals in Jonquière, Chicoutimi and Alma have been forced to be available for full-time work, even if before they were part-time. The second is the requirement that staff move from one institution to another to cover the needs that are the most critical. The third is the imposition of 12-hour shifts. This imposition is accompanied by the modification of work schedules. For example, within a seven day period the employer has the right, under the Ministerial Order, to force someone who is on a day time schedule to work evenings, to change his or her work schedule. The imposition of 12-hour shifts has caused great anger among members who are already subject to mandatory overtime more often than not. Now they are being told that they have to work 12-hour shifts. All of this makes it very difficult for staff to balance work and family, with daycare and with school. For some of them it's a major issue. WF: What are your demands under the current conditions where outbreaks are increasing significantly, including in your region? JB: We are asking for reinforcements. We need help. We are asking for additional staff, for government support to send staff to give us a hand. We feel we are being forgotten. We have the impression that we are being told to "get ourselves organized "and then things will be fine. There is an explosion of hospitalizations related to COVID-19. The pressure is very high, the overload of work is enormous, the distress too. It's hard, every day, to face the consequences of how badly the health care system has been battered over the last many years. We have received some reinforcements, nurses from the Montreal Heart Institute and Sainte-Justine Hospital. That has provided some relief but we need a bus full of care professionals. What we have asked for are third-year graduates, nurses, nursing assistants or respiratory therapists. We want them to come in as reinforcements. There are discussions with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education about that but it's very slow and they make it so complicated. We also ask for respect for the workers as health care professionals, but that's not what's happening. We are being mistreated by ministerial orders and the overload is even heavier than it was before. What we want is to be able to provide safe, quality care to the population. That's the commitment we made when we graduated from school. It is our number one priority. Secondly, what we're asking for is recognition. Government should stop calling us their "guardian angels" when they can't even take care of us properly, even though we've been on the front lines for nine months. We need help. (Translated from original French by Workers' Forum. Photos: FIQ, CIUSSS NIM)
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Faced with this serious problem of recruitment and retention,
we say that we need to make the jobs in the region more attractive so
that young people decide to come into the health network and so that
the people currently in place stay here, don't take early retirement
and don't change careers.