Re: “Aides part of the solution to better patient care,” comment, Nov. 30.
The B.C. Nurses’ Union has always been very clear about its position in regard to care aides in hospitals: We welcome their addition to existing care teams to provide assistance to patients with the activities of daily living.
The trouble is, Island Health isn’t adding care aides to the existing teams. It’s replacing nurses with care aides, leaving fewer nurses at the bedside. A total of 122 professional nursing positions at Royal Jubilee and Victoria General hospitals will be replaced with care aides in January 2014. This is a cut of 227,000 annual hours of skilled nursing care.
Nurses need to be at the bedside to monitor and assess a patient’s condition. Responding quickly to changes in behaviour or health conditions can be critical to patient outcomes. People in hospitals today are older and have higher acuity illness, which requires more — not less — highly skilled and trained nursing care.
Island Health is proceeding with these dramatic changes to save money, not to improve or sustain the safety of patient care.
We do not want to fall prey to Island Health’s tactic of pitting one health-care provider against the other. Nurses and care aides need to work together toward safe patient care and fight against Island Health’s relentless cost-cutting measures.
Debra McPherson
President, B.C. Nurses’ Union
