After more than two and a half years in negotiation, the provincial government and the New Brunswick Nurses Union have reached tentative collective agreements for two bargaining units including more than 6,000 registered nurses, nurse practitioners, nurse managers and nurse supervisors. The province announced the deal in a news release Friday morning, and said details of the agreements will be withheld pending ratification.
The tentative agreements are a positive step in a crisis that has seen a nursing shortage cause reduced emergency room services in three rural hospitals in New Brunswick, including the Sackville Memorial Hospital.
CHMA spoke the New Brunswick Nurses Union president Paula Doucet back in June to talk about the shortage, the current plight of working nurses in the province, and potential solutions.
Hear Paula Doucet speaking on Tantramar Report:
“Unfortunately, the entire provinces is feeling this the nursing shortage,” says Doucet, “whether you’re in Sackville or Campbellton, Grand Manan, Saint John, Fredericton, Bathurst, Edmundston… Pick your community, pick your city, we’re all in this.”
Sackville’s emergency room is down three RNs from a full complement of nine. “For a facility of the size of Sackville, missing three nurses or five nurses or even one nurse, you really feel that,” says Doucet. And then, “not too far down the road, you look at what’s going on at the George Dumont or the Moncton City Hospital, where in one facility, there’s upwards of 125 vacancies.”
When CHMA spoke with Doucet in June, the scale of the province-wide shortage was pegged at 700 vacancies. That number has since grown to 854 vacancies, as Doucet told CBC on July 13.
The longstanding lack of collective agreement is not the only barrier to filling nursing vacancies, says Doucet.
“We’ve been saying for a number of years now that if there’s no pointed recruitment and retention strategy put in place that this was going to eventually happen,” says Doucet. “And here we are.”
Doucet says that for years RNs in the province have been “stepping up” to keep the health system running, but the pandemic added a new level of stress to that task, with ever changing guidelines for infection prevention.
And nurses have been overworked. The union submitted an access to information request to find out just how much overtime their members have been working. “Between Vitalité and Horizon there were over 353,000 hours of overtime work in 2020 by registered nurses,” says Doucet. “That equates to about 180 full time equivalent positions.”
“Nurses continue to work extra long hours,” says Doucet. “And right now what we’re battling the most is the 24 hour shift.” Some nurses are “going to work on on say a Tuesday morning at 7:30, and not leaving till Wednesday morning at 7:30,” says Doucet. “Nurses are being expected to hold the system together to keep units open,” she says. “But at the same time, they’re working well beyond what they should be.”
“That’s why I’ve been saying to government and to employers, we need to make some drastic changes, because it’s not humane to continue to expect nurses to hold the system together the way they have.”
Doucet acknowledges that the lack of a collective agreement for over two and half years has been likely adding to the vacancy crisis in nursing. She says New Brunswick nurses are also the lowest paid in Canada, currently.
“It’s one thing to to be the lowest pay, but we also need to fix our working conditions,” says Doucet, citing issues around violence in health care settings.
“There’s a lot of moving targets here that need to be addressed and need to be addressed rather quickly,” says Doucet, “in order to make healthcare a more attractive career choice for young people, but also to try to recruit others to the province of New Brunswick as well.”
Geri Geldart, the VP of Clinical Services with Horizon, pointed out when announcing cuts to services in Sackville that there are just not enough nurses being educated and trained across the country. Doucet agrees. “The fact that we don’t have the ability to admit to our university programs the number of students that are on the waitlist that want to become registered nurses is a problem.”
She also points out there’s a waitlist to get into the bridging program that allows licensed practical nurses (LPNs) to get trained as RNs in an accelerated program.
“If there’s waitlist, we need to be having some conversations with universities to find out, do they have the human resources and the infrastructure to actually accept more?” There’s also a need for good clinical placements around the province, says Doucet.
Doucet has been a “proud registered nurse” for 25 years, and has encouraging words for young people considering the career, but who may be put off by the current working conditions. “It’s not always easy. It’s not always fun. But it’s a very rewarding job,” says Doucet. “It’s a career that can take you many places.”
“Right now, we are very much focused on the acute care setting of what nurses do, but there’s so many things in so many roles, and so many doors that could open for registered nurses,” says Doucet.
“Yes, right now is a tough time. But I don’t believe that tough times last forever. I think there’s a way out, I think we’ll see the end of this shortage at some point,” says Doucet. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But I think nursing is an amazing career.”
Doucet says any young person considering nursing should reach out to an RN to have a conversation. “We’ve all gone into the profession for reasons that are more than the shortages that we’re working right now,” she says.