Editor:
I am a retired nurse with 40 years of experience. I have gone through many changes in the health care system.
I have major concerns about the choices the UCP is making for all of us.
In the past, disaster occurred on several occasions when nursing positions were eliminated to save money rather than looking at the multiple levels of the system, or the out-of-control large hospital costs. Nursing school enrolments rapidly declined and quickly there was a shortage.
Now we have the second wave of COVID-19 with nursing staff stretched to the limit and we are laying many of them off in the future. COVID-19 may be reduced, but it is not disappearing.
Hundreds of years ago, hospitals were a very dangerous place because of the spread of bacteria from the sick patients within.
During my time in management, I worked in a hospital that decided to privatize house cleaning. Working with the lab within three months, my unit infection rate had increased over 10 per cent.
The cleaning staff at a hospital are our frontline protection. With COVID-19, we need them now more than ever.
It isn’t an easy job and they deserve to be respected and earn fair benefits for the job they perform. Often the poorly paid privatized worker would not show up for their shift, as they had a better job and no one replaced them.
A third major cut will be our laboratory professionals whom we depend on to help diagnose and monitor disease and infection rates. Our labs are part of a highly standardized system.
As professionals, they deserve to be supported with permanent jobs and fair benefits. Without the cooperation of the lab, I would not have been able to demonstrate the dangerous results created by this very poor decision.
Private companies rarely staff appropriately or offer benefits. Privatized services often don’t go the extra mile when something is questionable, as they are paid to only do the basics.
I am not saying we can’t be more cost effective, but we have to re-visit the whole health care system. Individuals who know the system and acknowledge the poor decisions in the past need to be involved in this process.
If we don’t learn from history and put people in place that know what they are doing – we are making cuts; we are not improving our overall health care system, just creating more challenges.
Lynn Cooper,
Canmore
