NDP’s health care listening tour yet to produce ‘significant change’

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The head of the Manitoba Nurses Union (MNU) says it’s time for the NDP government to go beyond listening and making election-style promises, and time to start making the changes they promised to fix issues that continue to plague nurses across the province.

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“We’ve said enough with the Listening Tour, it’s time to make some significant changes to health care culture,” MNU President Darlene Jackson said in a statement released this week on the MNU Facebook page.

During last fall’s provincial election, Wab Kinew and the NDP made fixing health care issues a pillar of their election campaign, before being voted into office on Oct. 3.

Soon after taking office, the NDP announced they would begin conducting what they have been calling “listening tours” that see officials travel to health-care centres in urban and rural areas and speak to frontline health-care workers about the challenges they face, and ways to fix them.

Jackson said it is now time for the NDP to share what they have learned from these listening tours, and to start to implement changes and policies to fix the issues.

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“Perhaps it’s time to share some of what was learned on the Listening Tour with Manitobans?” Jackson said. “Instead of reiterating election promises, perhaps it’s time for Manitobans to learn of the findings from the Tour and what’s being done about culture.”

In her statement, Jackson said nurses in health care-centres across the province continue to reach out to MNU and complain that “culture” and day-to-day working conditions are some of the biggest challenges they face, and often lead to them being burnt out and considering quitting their jobs.

“Culture can be measured by the people allowed to remain in management positions. It would be good for this government to know if employees trust leadership and if they feel valued at work,” Jackson said.

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“Culture is all about buy-in. It would be good to know if the frontline sees the changes that have been announced, and if they feel these changes are healthy for the system. Culture can be measured in job satisfaction.”

Another union leader that represents health-care workers in Manitoba echoed similar sentiments recently about a lack of change in culture in health care centres in Manitoba since the NDP took office.

Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP) president Jason Linklater said during an interview earlier this year he sees the NDP government taking steps to try and improve health care, but he said until there are changes at the management system at Shared Health, he does not have much hope that things will improve for the thousands of allied health care workers they represent.

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“We are still in the same situation and having the same issues and that is not changing, so it’s like throwing good money at bad, because Shared Health has not executed on a plan to improve culture and to increase hiring, and to do all the things that we need to do to get back to executing on the government’s intention to fix the health care system,” Linklater said.

A report released by MAHCP in late June showed that approximately 65% of allied health-care workers surveyed had “seriously considered” quitting their jobs in the last year. Among those who said they had seriously considered quitting, the majority of respondents said it was because of current workloads and due to “work stress affecting my wellbeing.”

The head of the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union (MGEU) has also been sounding the alarm recently about health care in the province, as last month the union released From Crisis to Stability, a report that includes statistics showing the current state of health-care staffing in rural Manitoba communities, and gives several recommendations.

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At a media conference on July 18, in Winnipeg, MGEU President Kyle Ross called on the NDP government to take steps to stop what he called a rural health care “crisis” as he said employees the union represents work in increasingly difficult and stressful situations, while he said hiring and recruitment remains “stagnant.”

“This government made an election commitment to fix health care. To keep their promise, the government must invest in the entire health-care team,” Ross said.

“Health care is, at its heart, about people taking care of people, and no matter how advanced medications and medical equipment gets, you can’t have health care without health-care workers.”

In an email, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara responded to Jackson’s comments.

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“I am deeply appreciative of all health care workers, a vast many of whom are MNU members, who took time out of their busy schedules to meet the Premier and me on our listening tour,” Asagwara said. “They told us that they were grateful to have us there, on the ground, listening to them.

“Solutions are found at the frontlines, and we have implemented tangible changes that came directly from meeting health-care workers in their places of work. A number of concerns, including schedule flexibility for nurses, security measures, and patient discharge capacity, were all brought up on the listening tour — and we took immediate steps to begin addressing them.”

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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