Energetic start to NDP ‘listening tour’

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Front-line health-care workers gave Premier Wab Kinew and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara an “earful” on the first stop of their eight-hospital “listening tour.”

What was supposed to be an hour-long session at the Grace Hospital in Winnipeg turned into a nearly two-hour, closed-door venting, featuring both tears and laughter, Kinew told reporters Friday.

“It’s pretty intense to listen to the voices of those on the front line.”

The NDP premier and health minister launched the venture seeking to hear ideas, concerns and priorities directly from front-line health workers.

More than 60 took part Friday. Staffing shortages were their No. 1 beef.

“Folk are stressed out, folks are thinking about retirement, folks are begging for help because they’re short-staffed,” the premier said. “Their jobs are that much more difficult and, as a result, you, the patient, are bearing the impact.”

Beleaguered staff at the Grace cited the diagnostic and surgical recovery task force — a Tory government-created entity disbanded last month by the NDP — as one of the culprits, Kinew said.

“This morning, we got an earful about the negative impacts of the task force from the front lines,” he said, adding there was “widespread support” for its dissolution.

“The point that was made is that resources were being drawn, staff was being taken away from a lot of departments here at the Grace” and ending up at “other sites,” the premier said during a news conference in the Winnipeg hospital boardroom. “That was being done in a way that was damaging the ability of folks at this hospital to deliver care.”

Kinew wouldn’t say to which other sites Grace staff were drawn away.

“The task force was playing favourites in the health-care system. Multiple departments at the Grace Hospital were the ones losing staff. We have to now confront new staffing issues in the health-care system… because of the actions of the task force.”

On Friday, the Opposition Tories (supplanted in the Oct. 3 election by a majority NDP government) said the premier should explain how he’s going to reduce surgical and diagnostic wait times, rather than point fingers.

“Instead of disparaging doctors who helped 85,000 Manitobans who were waiting in pain, Wab Kinew needs to tell the thousands still waiting how he plans to get them their procedures now that he’s cut the task force,” a statement from a PC spokesperson said.

Meantime, the Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said she wants to know if those “other sites” included private clinics. “That’s a concern for me — drawing staff out of the public system and into the private system.”

Doctors Manitoba said it wasn’t aware of the specific concern raised at the Grace.

“We certainly heard both beefs and bouquets from physicians about the task force and shared that feedback with the government of the day,” spokesperson Keir Johnson said in an email Friday.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals said it couldn’t comment on the task force “playing favourites” without more specific information.

The listening tour — seeking to visit seven more hospitals in the coming months — heard Friday from an array of front-line workers, as well as private agency nurses.

Some of those private-sector employees are willing to return to the public system if it can relieve the exhaustion, burnout and mandatory overtime, Asagwara said.

“People want to work in the public system and see the benefits… They need a government willing to work with them, not against them,” the MLA for Union Station said.

“Our plan moving forward is working with health-care leadership and the front-line health-care workers to provide care at the bedside to make sure that decisions we make in health care are in collaboration with a systemic lens applied, so that we’re not managing decisions in one region that negatively affects another region.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca