On Wednesday afternoon, the Saskatchewan NDP introduced a registered nurse from Saskatoon at the legislative building, who spoke about the chaos of being redeployed into a different department that was out of her professional scope.
Melissa McGillivray works in both the City Hospital emergency ward and in long-term care.
Additionally, she has been reassigned throughout various stages of the pandemic to work in the ICU, despite not being a trained ICU nurse.
McGillivray said she wants to see recognition from the Saskatchewan government when it comes to addressing adequate staffing issues, especially since those problems were prevalent prior to the pandemic.
“The burnout, the exhaustion on the part of my co-workers is unbelievable — like people crying at work, that never used to be the norm,” McGillivray stated.
“You know, people taking more sick time just because they can’t handle shifts. I have never worked so much overtime in my life and it’s because if I pick up the overtime, my coworkers can have a day off,” she added.
McGillivray said she typically finds out in the morning of her shift whether she will be in ICU that day or if she will go back to her home department, and that it depends on where she would be of most use.
“Now it bears mentioning that I am helpful in ICU, but I’m not a critical care nurse, so even though I have emergency room experience, I can’t actually take a patient load,” she explained.
McGillivray adds that when she is stationed in the ICU, it’s her role to help with basic care that the unit wouldn’t need a registered nurse to do, but simply an extra body to help with things.
McGillivray continues on to say she is seeing nurses who are pivoting to contract nursing because they are no longer seeing the point in having benefits and a pension when they don’t feel like they can handle the overwhelming workload of their current role.
“They’re taking contract nursing positions, they’re leaving Saskatchewan to go to B.C., they’re leaving to go to Ontario and that never used to be the thing. People wanted to come to Saskatchewan because we had great jobs here,” she said.
The Saskatoon nurse said she is speaking out about her experiences because she believes those in charge of health care within the province need to hear from front-line health-care workers and the reality of the position they’ve been put in.
McGillivray said dealing with COVID-19 itself isn’t what’s burdensome, but rather the backlog of other health-related matters they’re dealing with in hospitals.
“What’s really disheartening is seeing the people come in with active GI bleeds because of the alcoholism that spun out of control during the pandemic. It’s the delayed cancer diagnoses that are happening in emergency that used to happen in your family doctor’s office,” she stated.
“It’s the fact that you have people coming in to access mental health care and support, and the resources are so limited and so COVID sucks, but all the other stuff just makes it that much worse.
She goes on to say there are many health-care workers who say it’s nice to hear senior health officials saying thank you and that they respect health-care workers, but said that those on the front lines, like herself, are not necessarily feeling that respect when they have to go into work and face chaotic situations on a daily basis.
“Yes, I signed up to be a nurse; yes, I knew this was very much a reality that was possible in my lifetime, but I never expected it to be like this and I never expected to not feel supported,” McGillivray explained.
“And I mean, it bears mentioning that our front-line managers are amazing, but they’re working with the system and they’ve got limited ability to to fix the system themselves..and so they need support from the government so that they can support their workers to get them at work safely and practising to full scope and caring for the patients of Saskatchewan.”
Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman says the ministry recognizes that it has been a tough time for health-care workers across the province.
“It is extremely stressful, that’s why we’re getting people back to their original positions, back to their original shifts, so they can absolutely decrease their stress level and get back into their normal routine,” Merriman said on Wednesday.
Ryan Meili, the official opposition leader, is once again calling for an independent public inquiry into what the NDP calls a “long list of unanswered questions that nearly collapsed Saskatchewan’s health system.”