Can’t fix health care if leaders refuse to protect nurses

Opinion

It shouldn’t take arbitration orders, union grievances, or public shaming for Manitoba’s largest health-care employer to take the safety of its nurses seriously.

And yet, time and time again, that’s exactly what happens at the Health Sciences Centre and within Shared Health, the authority that runs it.

This week brought yet another example. CancerCare Manitoba, which is located at HSC, finally allowed nurses to use the front door of the facility to get into work.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were being forced to use a hidden, more dangerous entrance, often in the dark, often alone and often walking through unsafe areas where crime and disorder are common.

It was an unnecessary risk imposed on health-care workers who already put their physical and mental well-being on the line every time they clock in.

And for what? Bureaucratic convenience. Arbitrary rules. A refusal to see things from the perspective of those most at risk.

This is hardly the first time the employer has had to be forced into action. Just last year, arbitrator Kris Gibson issued a damning decision against Shared Health after the Manitoba Nurses Union launched a grievance over unsafe conditions at HSC.

Nurses were being assaulted, threatened and harassed. They were begging for more security, more safety protocols and real, tangible changes.

Yet it took the intervention of an arbitrator to order Shared Health to implement basic safety measures.

Think about that for a moment. In one of the most violent and high-risk workplaces in the province, the employer had to be ordered — by a third party — to take steps any reasonable person would consider the bare minimum.

This is not a one-off problem. It’s a pattern. Over and over, nurses raise safety concerns and over and over, management resists. Only when pushed — by an arbitrator, by a grievance, by the glare of media attention — does the employer take action.

That’s the most troubling part of all this: Shared Health doesn’t appear interested in being proactive when it comes to nurse safety. They respond only when they have no other choice.

Take the recent move by the Manitoba Nurses Union to “grey list” HSC. Grey listing is a serious move. It’s a public statement to nurses across Canada that HSC is not a safe place to work, making it harder to recruit staff at a time when Manitoba is desperate for them.

The fact that the union felt compelled to take such a drastic step (nurses voted 94 per cent in favour of the move earlier this month) is itself a damning indictment of Shared Health’s leadership.

Instead of recognizing that reality and making major, visible improvements to safety, Shared Health has consistently dragged its feet, downplayed the risks and pointed to half-measures.

The consequences of this inaction are not abstract. Nurses are being attacked. They’re being groped, punched and verbally abused by patients and visitors. They’re questioning whether they want to stay in a profession they once loved.

And in a health-care system already stretched to the breaking point, every nurse who walks away makes the crisis that much worse. Recruitment and retention are already massive challenges in Manitoba. The NDP government has promised to fix health care, but it cannot do so without nurses. And nurses will not stay if they don’t feel safe.

Safety is not optional. It’s not an add-on. It’s not something to be “balanced” against budgets and bureaucratic convenience. It’s fundamental. If you can’t keep your workforce safe, you can’t run a hospital. It’s that simple.

The question Manitobans should be asking is: where is the accountability for Shared Health and HSC leadership?

Why does Shared Health get away with dragging its heels, ignoring front-line concerns, and often making changes only when legally compelled? Why aren’t health-care executives being held responsible for their failures to provide a safe work environment?

It’s a cultural problem. At the top of Shared Health and HSC, there doesn’t seem to be a deep, genuine commitment to protecting nurses. There are lots of statements, lots of reassurances, lots of promises but little evidence of action unless someone else forces it.

That has to change. Safety cannot be left to arbitration rulings and piecemeal fixes. Manitoba needs a proactive, system-wide strategy to make hospitals safe.

That means listening to nurses first, not last. It means anticipating risks instead of reacting to crises. It means holding senior managers accountable when they fail to act.

If the culture at Shared Health is too entrenched to change, then perhaps it’s time for the provincial government to step in more directly. After all, HSC is Manitoba’s flagship hospital. It’s where the sickest patients go. It’s where the most complex care is provided.

If Manitoba is serious about fixing health care, it has to start here. Because without safe workplaces, there are no nurses. And without nurses, there is no health care.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca