FACTS MATTER: Checking the NDP’s promises in health care — More nurses and beds, true or false?

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We’ve heard the NDP government make many announcements concerning our health-care system — more beds, more nurses and more staff, but are these numbers accurate? Are we seeing an ease in pressure on our medical system? How are nurses — our frontline workers — coping with the influx of viruses and care resulting from crime?

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Figuring whether the government has followed through isn’t an easy task.

“They’ve hired 304 nurses into the health-care system. Whether that’s net new or just new hires, I don’t know,” Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, told The Winnipeg Sun. “In order to be very accurate we need to know how many nurses have retired, have left the system, the profession, the province or gone to a private agency to know whether that’s new.

“What we monitor is vacancy rates, agency nurse use, and the amount of overtime both mandated and voluntary worked,” she said. “Until we see some definitive change in those numbers, it’s very difficult to say with accuracy whether that measure has been a benefit.”

When discussing their ability to measure whether the new hires and beds have been fruitful, Jackson gave an example of a less favourable outcome.

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“We just completed a poll and we’re still hearing from our members that there’s no decrease in their heavy workload and a lot of mandated and voluntary overtime, as well as a very high number of vacancy nurses used.

“When we open new beds, it’s great, but until we see an increase in the number of nurses in our system, those beds aren’t going to be effective. A hospital bed is just a bed unless there’s a nurse beside it.”

The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. If nurses are reporting less overtime and decreasing work loads, then we could say government policy has been helpful.

“Retention of nurses is very important,” Jackson said. “We manage to bargain for some improvement in our collective agreements, but as other provinces start bargaining and looking into other incentives, we’re back where we started again.”

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That points to the fact that we should be working hard at keeping our nurses happy — both old and new.

“Our ‘say’ to the government is we need to continue to retain nurses until we can bolster our ranks,” Jackson said. “We need to make sure new grads and nurses when they come into the system are supported and mentored, so we keep them.

“(New grads) get pushed off the end of the pier into deep waters and are really struggling out there because the nurses that are working with them are already carrying workloads that are heavier than ever before, so providing that mentorship, unless you have a dedicated person, is very difficult.”

Overworked nurses are a stereotype for a reason. Why then haven’t we worked harder at alleviating their workload and providing them with the needed support?

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“We did negotiate some language on providing mentorship to new nurses,” Jackson said. “Employers are struggling to do that right now, to find the money to provide these mentors.”

Jackson’s solution to the retention of nurses is efficient and simple.

“We’re encouraging the government to provide some funds to employers to provide mentorship opportunities for those new students because that’s how we’ll retain them,” Jackson said. “They need someone dedicated to mentorship and support. We can’t expect nurses that are drowning to provide support to new nurses.”

When discussing whether the government is made aware of the crisis our medical staff is under, the answer was simple.

“It’s important that they’re bringing frontline nurses in, and that they’re taking some of the things they’re hearing on their listening tours and putting them into action.”

When referring to what our government is doing with these cries for help, Jackson did not know.

“If you want solutions or suggestions on what would work, you need to go to the front lines,” she said. “They understand the health-care system and where the deficits are more than anyone else.

“We haven’t heard any report from the government concerning what they’re hearing on these listening tours. We’d like to see transparency on that,”

Wouldn’t we all?

Health is and should be the utmost concern to our local government. What can be achieved without a healthy population?

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