Nurses desperately need reinforcements

“Nurses in this country are continually asked to sacrifice, to do more with less. They know that life is fragile. They can’t walk away amid the ‘huffing’ and ‘puffing’ and ‘barking’ from gruff and cranky doctors.”

There’s a new book entitled “E.R. Nurses” by bestselling author James Patterson (with Matt Eversmann) that highlights the compassion and selflessness of nurses. On the book jacket, Theresa Brown, PHD, RN, writes that the book “captures the beating heart of nursing: the lives lost and saved, the hard tragedies and unbelievable miracles, and how every day nurses show up, give their all for patients, all the while holding on to their empathy and humanity.”

Why is it taking so long for our provincial and national leaders and the chain of command of our health-care systems to recognize the unimaginable workload of health-care professionals in a strained system already on the brink of collapse?

Recently, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam admitted that the public-health system in Canada wasn’t prepared for COVID. In her annual report, she wrote, “Our public-health system has been stretched dangerously thin and this is in need of critical reinforcements.” Is Dr. Tam finally telling Canadians that our health-care is broken, not ready, not armed, if today is the unfortunate day that we require care for a heart attack, a mother’s broken hip or a grandchild’s croup?

In Newfoundland, “critical reinforcements” for health care is hardly on Premier Andrew Furey’s agenda. While he and the other premiers meet with the prime minister and beg for more health-care dollars, Furey’s government continues to spend extravagantly. In November, his government attended a fourday climate summit in Scotland that cost the taxpayers $50K. In a debt-burdened province, Furey is now projecting to open a regional premier’s office in Grand Falls that some say is simply a make-work project for Liberal supporters.

The Registered Nurses’ Union of Newfoundland and Labrador (RNUNL) said in late December that nurses are among many health-care workers in the province perplexed over the haphazard approach to the current COVID-19 booster campaign. It’s unbelievable that RNUNL president Yvette Coffey had to write a letter to Furey, Health Minister Dr. John Haggie and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald asking why the prioritization of health-care workers for booster vaccines had not happened. There have been plenty of photo-ops of top officials administering vaccines, but never a release of a planned strategy to first protect those workers who protect us all.

Registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and personal care attendants remain on the frontline of this pandemic. By showing up each day without booster shots, they put themselves, their patients and their families at risk.

Nurses are defined by their resiliency. They are the first to see the patient, the first to start the IV. They are the nurturers, the heavy lifters. If you want to understand the human interaction, look at nurses. Their badges of courage are the blotches and blisters on their noses and cheeks from wearing masks for 12- to 15-hour shifts.

A recent National Post article points out that hospital capacity in Canada has been limping along for decades. Yet, during the pandemic, our prime minister shut down Parliament and ran the country from a tent in front of his Ottawa residence. No questions, no debate, no accountability. Unbelievably, in the middle of a pandemic, Justin Trudeau called an election that the country did not need and could not afford. Why have our parliamentarians not shown up and demanded a national conversation on the inadequacies of our health-care capacity, a capacity that ranks as one of the lowest in the developed world?

Nurses, on the other hand, are there for people who need them, often at the end of patients’ lives. Nurses in this country are continually asked to sacrifice, to do more with less. They know that life is fragile. They can’t walk away amid the “huffing” and “puffing” and “barking” from gruff and cranky doctors. Nurses know that patient is someone’s mom. That young boy is some mom’s son. They know that some wife tonight will still have a husband because a nurse showed up and worked a strenuous shift.

In British Columbia, nurses have not only been caught in the fog of the pandemic, but their hospitals have faced the wildfires of summer, the severe floods of fall and the deep freezes of early winter. Do any of the leaders really understand the level of craziness and brokenness that health-care workers have been facing, with no quiet time for decompression or refuelling?

The next time someone considers providing a bonus, naming a building or erecting a statue to honour some health minister or chief medical officer, we need to remind them that the next statue should recognize a group of dishevelled nurses complete with masks and PPE regalia. And if only the sculptor could also cast in bronze the combat fatigue, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the COVID collateral damage, the awful burnout, and the endless pit of depression gnawing at nurses’ insides.

In Patterson’s “E.R. Nurses,” there is an apt inscription for the base of such a statue: “As a nurse, you’ve got to have your best day on someone else’s worst day.”

Robert and Donna Dawe, parents of an ER nurse Topsail