Re: “Under fire, Island Health adjusts to new model,” Jan. 16.
Island Health just doesn’t get it.
While the addition of care aides is most welcome in hospital units, addition is the operative word. Whatever the bottom line in reduction of registered nurses or licensed practical nurses, even the reduction by one is too many.
Replacing a nurse with a care aide is a dangerous safety risk to the patient. A very sick patient needs the day-to-day assessment of a trained professional. Nurses are constantly assessing their patients when they bathe them, feed them and spend valuable time talking to them. This cannot, and should not, be delegated to a care aide: they simply do not have the medical training. A care aide should be just that, an aide to the nurses and doctors who are taking care of their patients.
If most of the nurses working under Island Health’s “Care Model Redesign” in Nanaimo would not be comfortable having a family member as a patient under this new model, would you feel comfortable with your family member as a patient? I know I certainly would not.
This cost-cutting at the expense of patients, and depriving them of yet more, already understaffed, professional nurses, will simply not do. Island Health should keep all the nurses and add care aides, then it will be doing its job.
Linda Richardson
Sidney
