Katie Doyle has been a licensed practical nurse for 18 years. She works at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre where she’s practiced as a floater nurse, and most recently an OR nurse.
Doyle says she loves her job but in August she was diagnosed with cancer and forced to take time off.
“I can’t work through it,” she said. “Chemo is miserable, it makes you miserable, you’re tired, you’re sick, you can’t work.”
Doyle recently completed her six months of chemo, but remains off work due to an upcoming surgery to remove more cancer spots that were found.
She’s looking forward to returning to work once she recovers, but said that she’s disappointed after learning that because of her medical leave she doesn’t qualify for the full $10,000 retention bonus the province announced for nurses in March.
Instead of the full $10,000, Doyle says she’ll get a prorated amount for the time she worked during the last fiscal year, which was four months.
“I feel like they missed the mark,” said Doyle. “I’ve been with them for 18 years so why don’t I get the full amount just like every other permanent nurse at the hospital?”
In March, Premier Tim Houston announced a retention bonus as a way of thanking nurses in our province and encouraging them to keep working in the province. The bonus was $10,000 for all nurses in the publicly funded health care system with another $10,000 incentive for nurses who commit to staying in the system for another two years.
After the announcement concerns were raised that nurses on maternity leave didn’t qualify. The premier quickly noted that anyone on parental or mat leave would still be eligible, prompting Doyle to question why she doesn’t.
In a statement, the department of health confirms that employees on leave, such as sick leave, unpaid, WCB and other types of leaves, are eligible for incentive payments based on the percentage of time they worked in the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The statement added that “we continue to work with our health system partners to improve workplaces, listen and make changes to build a better healthcare system for providers to work in.”
NDP leader Claudia Chender said that a simple improvement would be making the incentive available to all full-time employees regardless their leave status for the 2022-2023 year.
“If this is a thank you then it should be a thank you to all nurses,” said Chender. “The government did adapt the program to ensure nurses on maternity leave were covered, or to clarify that at any rate, and we’re asking them to do the same for nurses like Katie who, through no fault of their own, are taking care of their health so they can return to nursing.”
Doyle said that she knows she’s also not alone in this position. In a Facebook group for nurses she says others on medical leave have raised the same concerns.
While incentive is meant to encourage nurses to keep working for the province, Katie says for those excluded, it’s having the opposite effect.
“It’s not fair, whenever you don’t choose to be off work, like none of us have this choice, that’s why I feel like it’s not fair. We want to be at work but we can’t,” said said.
Comments