‘I am the nurse’: Saskatoon nurses plead for staffing amid health-care crisis

“I am the nurse who holds up blankets for patients in our hallway beds as they use urinals, have heart tracings completed or soil pads changed while our co-workers are attempting to navigate around these hallway beds to transfer other very critically ill patients to medical imaging.”

Five nurses from St. Paul’s emergency room in Saskatoon shared dozens of anonymous testimonies at a nurses’ rally on Monday from their co-workers and nurses across the city about the conditions they have been forced to work in every day.

“I am the nurse who had a needle poke after inserting an IV in a violent, unco-operative patient. We did not have enough staff to properly or safely restrain this patient. I put myself and my family at risk of contracting unwanted infections.”

“I am the rural nurse who performed resuscitation on a baby. We waited 10 hours for an ambulance to transport this baby to NICU.”

“I am the nurse who had to push a 90-year-old grandma from her bed into the waiting room to sit in a hard chair for the night shift and we both cried.”

“I am the nurse who has cared for expecting mothers with bleeding in pregnancy. They present to our department scared and anxious. They receive vaginal exams in a tiny room in the triage. Some of these women are then told that they miscarried and are told that they no longer are expectant mothers. Every single patient in our waiting room can hear and see their cries, screams, fear and grief.”

Members of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses and health-care workers cried as they shared horrors from the hospital and desperately pleaded to the provincial government to offer them more hospital staffing and resources.

Each testimony was met with a call of “shame” from the crowd.

The rally was announced last week following inspections of St. Paul’s Hospital and Royal University Hospital by the Saskatoon Fire Department due to complaints of overcrowding.

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“The planned rally is in response to inadequate action on dangerous overcrowding, unsafe conditions for patients in emergency departments, and worsening registered nurse shortages throughout the system,” a previous release from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses read.

According to the union, in the last two years, St. Paul’s emergency department has lost 65 RNs.

A survey conducted by Saskatchewan’s nurses’ union showed almost 90 per cent of the time, nurses feel as though it is impossible to give safe care due to the environment they are subjected to. It also concluded 81 per cent of members reported times where patients were put at risk as a result of short staffing.

Three per cent of RNs stated they are constantly worried about their licences due to unsafe working conditions. Eighty-two per cent of staff reported that their position has taken a negative toll on their mental health.

“We don’t have enough registered nurses. A lot of them have reverted to casual because the workplaces are chaos. It is dangerous. it’s dangerous for the patients and for the nurses,” Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory said. “We are 1,000 full-time equivalents short.”

She said nothing the provincial government has done to help has translated to the front lines.

A capacity pressure action plan was announced for Saskatoon on the heels of the inspections by the Saskatchewan Health Authority on Nov. 14.

The plan outlined by SHA gave a list of actions that will be taken with ranging timelines, with some things being implemented within 30 days and others within a six-month timespan.

Zambory said previous conversations with politicians have done nothing.

“We have gone a spoken with Premier (Scott) Moe and with Minister (Everett) Hindley. The last time we spoke with Minister Hindley they just wanted to talk about a ‘positive message.’ They actually didn’t want to dig into that inconvenient truth or really what is going on in the front lines.”

The union wants to see a nursing task force created and have registered nurses brought to the table.

“This nursing task force, we sit down together, and we start to create plans and have conversations with people who have reverted to casual,” Zambory said.

She said a nursing task force has the potential to bring casual nurses back to the workforce full-time and find out what it takes to keep current nurses on staff.

“It will give registered nurses hope, because right now, there isn’t much.”

Moe attended a media presentation on microreactors in Saskatoon shortly before the rally but said he would not be attending as he was headed to the legislature in Regina.

He commented on the need for more health-care practitioners in the province across all designations.

“We are doing everything we can to recruit and train and retain the nurses that we do have in this province, all of the health workers that we have in Saskatchewan through our four-point action plan, but we have to be even more ambitious in the years ahead,” Moe said.

“We are a growing province, and we have people arriving every year, so it is a job that most certainly isn’t done but it is a job that we are committed to finding a way.”

A statement from the Ministry of Health said the province is implementing nearly $100 million in investments in the 2023-24 budget to add more full-time nursing positions and training seats and to boost recruitment efforts.

“In 2022, the number of nurses of all designations practicing in Saskatchewan increased by nearly 600 year-over-year. Since 2007, the number of nurses practicing in the province has increased by more than 5,300, including over 3,700 more Registered Nurses. The number of Nurse Practitioners has more than tripled to 343 and the number of licensed practical nurses has increased by more than 58 per cent to over 4,000.”

The province said 204 permanent new or enhanced full-time positions in rural and remote areas have been filled. It said it has received 152 final clinical placement bursary applications, given conditional offers to 416 internationally educated nurses and hired 754 nursing grads in the last year.

— with files from Global News’ Brody Langager