Nurses have started bargaining for a new contract and they say patient safety is their top priority.
The union pinpoints understaffing as the number one issue leading to patient safety concerns. Union chair of the Coastal Mountain Region Kath-Ann Terrett said St. Mary's Hospital is no exception.
"Staffing levels have continued to decrease over the last eight years," Terrett said, noting the mix of staff doing nursing duties has also changed. "They're actually replacing nurses and licensed practical nurses and putting more care aides in. They're trying to sort of streamline care.
"So when a nurse eight years ago would have eight patients, they now have 10, and they have what we call over-capacity. So they will admit one or two more patients for the nurse to take care of in addition to her regular patients. They staff for the beds, but they put more beds in than the nurses can care for."
Terrett said the result is overworked nurses who are not coping well.
"Nurses miss their breaks, they work overtime, they go home stressed, they get sick, and they're finding themselves in moral dilemmas all the time," she said.
Concerns have been raised over the staffing mix, but Terrett said those concerns take months to get through the system.
"They fill out the reports, the management tries, but with the budget constraints and then the political changes - we have a rotating door of managers and decision makers - so someone starts the ball rolling, then a new manager comes and they start the ball rolling in a different direction. It's like a billiard table - you hit the ball on various sides trying to get the ball in the pocket," Terrett said.
The issues are having serious consequences, according to Terrett.
"If you look at Vancouver Coastal Health [VCH], the failure to recover is another word for people who have died because they haven't had timely care. There has been a real increase in the failure to recover people, and that's because people aren't getting the right care at the right time," Terrett said. "If you go into an emergency room at St. Mary's Hospital, you have two nurses on. You may have 23 critically ill people. The nurse on duty is unable to call in extra help because it would require overtime and would cause a budgetary item. So those nurses work flat out, and often they can't provide timely care."
But VCH denies the claims that staffing is an issue at St. Mary's Hospital.
VCH spokesperson Anna Marie D'Angelo said there are more nurses now on staff at St. Mary's Hospital than there were last year, adding the staffing change to mix nurses and care aides has been working.
"We have a collaborative care model in place that we started in January and everything has been very positive," she said. "An RN [registered nurse] is supposed to deal with more acute things, an LPN [licensed practical nurse] more chronic, and then care aides will help with, say, mobility, those kinds of things associated with aging. So they're redoing the mix, but in doing that they're increasing RNs, LPNs and acute care aides."
D'Angelo claims the union is on board with the plan.
"The union has been involved with this all along the way, and they've been very supportive because we're increasing staff," she said.
Nurses wrapped up the first two days of preliminary bargaining discussion on Jan. 25, and bargaining will continue for two weeks beginning Feb. 20.
The current provincial contract covering more than 30,000 nurses expires March 31.
