Cheers &Jeers

Jeers: to more stories of abuse of patients at the Baie Verte Health Centre. Ten days after a nurse at the centre struck her uncle, Seal Cove resident Evelyn Rice was finally informed by Central Health. That it took 10 days is unacceptable on its own, but the fact that it happened to begin with is atrocious, especially considering this is the same facility that made news last fall when a man with late-stage Huntington’s disease was photographed wearing only a T-shirt and adult diaper by an employee at the health centre. What on earth is going on there? We trust health professionals to care for our loved ones when we can’t, and clearly, not enough is being done to protect them at this facility. And as to what happened in the incident involving Rice’s uncle? Well, she has no answers as to how it happened, and says, “I don’t know if that person is still working or not. I have no idea. They didn’t tell me that.”

Cheers: to finally paying early childcare educators what they’re worth. The announcement this week that pay would bump up to $25 per hour in regulated childcare centres is long overdue. Parents trust these workers to give their children the love and attention they can’t while they’re at work, and as the people who spend at least eight hours a day with children in their formative years, they’re some of the most important people in a child’s life. Will it be the solution to the childcare crisis we’re currently experiencing? That’s still not known, but with any luck, it will be enough to lure back some of the workers who left the profession in the past few years. If it’s not, as more and more parents struggle to find someone to care for their children, it will soon have a huge impact on the workforce as more families are forced to make a difficult choice.

Jeers: to climate change. Yes, this is worthy of a jeer every week – we need to do better as humans to protect our planet – but over the past few weeks we’ve seen real, tangible evidence of the impact it can have. Lack of sea ice in Labrador already forced the cancellation of Cain’s Quest earlier in the month, but now experts are pointing to it as the reason we’re getting more and more warnings about young polar bears popping up in unexpected spots on the island. These starving young bears are looking for food and the lack of ice in Labrador – as well as ice appearing in bays that don’t usually see it – has forced them to roam further afield. While we’re all enjoying seeing the icebergs that comes along with it, this should be a serious warning to all of us that we need to pay attention to sooner rather than later. Cheers: to offering incentives to bring doctors to rural parts of the province. On the heels of news that the province was pursuing urgent care centres to help relieve the pressure on the emergency room here in the St. John’s region and two days of protests from people in rural areas outside Confederation Building, the province announced it was offering a $200,000 bonus to recruit rural doctors in some rural, hard-to-staff hospitals in return for a two-year service agreement. It’s clear that at this point in our health crisis, we have to do whatever it takes to get doctors to the places that need them most. This offering has already been rolled out for Bonavista, and Health Minister Tom Osborne said March 15 it will be offered to any doctor who will practice in New-wes-valley in the coming days, then to doctors who will go to Baie Verte. Osborne also promised the 2023 budget – set to roll out this week – also has cash allocated to put a collaborative family clinic in Bonavista that will open in July and need another two doctors. Hopefully, the cash will be enough to entice doctors to these areas and the rest of the province, because we’ll all welcome them with open arms.