The Rights of Health Care Workers

In B.C., where I live, the nurses are unionized, and their union is putting up a modest series of tasteful ads about 'taking care of the people taking care of you'. Not even mentioning contract negotiations, just general stuff about how to cough, and staying home.
But if employers started hassling nurses about speaking up in public, etc., the Nurses Union would be right on top of it. As it is, the union, would likely be taking the heat, as a group - nurse reports problem to union, union goes public.

A series of acrimonious negotiations in the past have made our nurses fairly militant.

Health care workers weren't properly taken care of during SARS 1 either. I was teaching infectious disease classes at the time and I told the classes, were I still working in the hospital, I would have quit. Single mom, my son was still living at home, and SARS was killing otherwise young and healthy health care workers plus they took it home to others who also were dying.

I admire the workers who don't walk out. And maybe with SARS 2 were I younger and healthier I might have stayed on the job.

This is so typical of the raw end of the deal nurses get. It used to be the hospitals claimed they could not help staffing shortages. It wasn't until I was involved in a nursing wage revolution that I realized we were chronically short staffed because the hospitals had a monopoly on wages and they kept them falsely low.

Supply and demand: falsely keep demand low with low wages and supply will not increase. Pay nurses what they are worth and surprise, more people want to be nurses, including, gasp, more men.

So here we are with hospitals and other care facilities claiming, "oh noes what can we do, there simply aren't enough masks and other PPE. Come to work anyway, there's nothing we can do."

It's a dilemma. If nurses called their bluff and walked out, find that PPE or else, would the hospitals get a bit more creative?

They threw a lot of PPE out before figuring out they could in a pinch decontaminate it. They put out calls around here and it turned up PPE in all sorts of interesting places. We had masks in our earthquake kits, there were masks in closed dental offices and construction company warehouses, Disney donated rain ponchos that could be used in lieu of disposable gowns.

Are the hospitals doing enough? They certainly didn't do enough to prepare. I find this odd because during the H5N1 bird flu threat, all the facilities I was working with stocked up. But the urgency was lost and those reserve supplies were not kept up. Aren't we stupid. Why yes, yes we are.

One thing the hospitals and other facilities need to do, at a minimum, is to stop pressuring staff to shut up. Gawd at least let them vent. I dare the hospitals to fire them. They don't understand the flak they will get if they dare fire anyone.

I know those administrators, they are the ones that told one of my colleagues to take off her WSNA pin (used to be our universal but ineffective union but it is also the WA State Nurses Association) when she was promoted to non-union management. They are the ones that spend an inordinate amount of time collecting positive patient experience surveys. The survey results matter, nursing issues, not so much. Now their failure to adapt to the changed situation is glaring.

I'm glad I've always prided myself in adapting to new situations.

Not sure this rambling is going anywhere. We need to support any health care worker who is expressing their concerns. Write letters or email those hospital administrators, tell them to support those nurses and doctors who are letting the public know they need more PPE because contrary to those administrators' fears, it actually brings results.


To be continued.

Yes, if ever there was a time for wearing masks out in the common areas, or out in public in general, this is the time! Reassuring people, and setting a good example.