Nurses’ union grey-lists Seven Oaks hospital

Nurses are officially being discouraged from taking shifts at Seven Oaks General Hospital owing to long-standing safety concerns.

The Manitoba Nurses Union said Friday it had officially enacted a grey-listing  — a union tactic aimed at pressing health authorities to take action in response to members’ concerns. Ninety-eight per cent of members working at Seven Oaks voted in favour of the action in June.

“Nurses are describing shifts where they simply do not have enough staff to provide the care patients need. They have raised these concerns repeatedly. They’re done with delays. They need action now,” MNU president Darlene Jackson said in a news release.

Seven Oaks is the fourth hospital in Manitoba to be grey-listed by nurses, joining Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Thompson General Hospital.

The news release said security cameras have been repaired and security staffing has improved at Seven Oaks, but nurses say those measures do not address “ongoing workload concerns, and the additional overnight triage nurse position is limited to a one-year term with no guarantee it will continue.”

When asked to respond to another Manitoba hospital being grey-listed by the MNU, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said that the province has been listening to nurses and taking action.

“We’ve met with and talked directly with the MNU rep at that site,” Asagwara said when asked Friday at the federal-provincial-territorial health ministers meeting at The Leaf in Assiniboine Park.

“We have been very responsive to requests and calls for more action in terms of safety, security and staffing, and we’re going to continue to,” said the minister, who is a registered psychiatric nurse.

“For us, as a government, there’s no finish line here.  We’re going to continue to staff the front lines of the health care system all across the province as quickly as we can,” said Asagwara, pointing to nurse vacancy rates that are lower than they’ve been “in many, many years.” The minister said there’s more work to do.

“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas in terms of safety and security.  Health care needs evolve. Safety needs evolve. We have to evolve with it.”