Overloaded with patients, running out of patience: nurses deliver clear, clever message to NDP

Opinion

With his approval ratings still soaring, Premier Wab Kinew can probably afford to anger a variety of different interests in the province without fear of losing the next election.

However, nurses are not a constituency to mess with.

As the NDP government knows very well, nurses are where the rubber meets the road in health care. You can have an oversupply of doctors, hospital beds and emergency rooms and still not provide better health care without an adequate supply of nurses.

Notwithstanding a generally positive relationship with the NDP, the Manitoba Nurses Union bused several hundred of its members to the Manitoba legislature earlier this week for a rally that was, shall we say, explicit about how they feel.

Standing on the front steps of the Legislative Building, the pink-shirted nurses displayed a pink banner that read: “Same Shift; Different Day.”

However, the ‘f’ in shift was crossed out.

Nurses can rest assured their message with the cleverly crossed-out letter was received, loud and clear. They want to make sure government and the public know that right now, it seems that every day a nurse works in this province ends up being a horrible, no good, very bad day.

Why are they feeling so militant?

Despite the Kinew government’s better efforts, Manitoba is still suffering from a profound shortage of nurses. That means those on the job are working longer hours, in hospitals overwhelmed by growing patient numbers, in an environment that is increasingly dangerous.

There has been some progress.

The province has been intensively recruiting doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals. It has also introduced new financial guardrails to cap the fees charged by private nursing agencies, a measure that will not only save regional health authorities significant sums of money, but may ultimately make working for private agencies a little less lucrative.

Thanks to all those initiatives, in February Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced the province had made 1,200 net new hires of health-care professionals, including 481 new nurses. Some of those nurses came out of retirement, while others did as the minister had hoped and returned to the public system from private agencies.

Given the Kinew government cannot be accused of doing nothing, then why are nurses so cranky? In large part, it seems the macro forces that are behind the problems faced by nurses have grown larger than the NDP planned for when it took power in the fall of 2023.

And because the health-care system left for the NDP was a hot mess.

The opposition Progressive Conservatives have predictably asked nurses and the NDP government to stop “playing the blame game” by reminding everyone how badly they did at managing health from 2016 to 2023. The problem is that while there will be a time to stop blaming the Tories for health-care woes, it isn’t now.

Rash decisions to reconfigure the health system and a palpable and acute disdain for nurses and their unions played a significant role in exacerbating the staffing shortage.

There were other factors beyond the PC government’s control, not least of which was the horror of the early days of COVID-19. And Manitoba is not the only jurisdiction struggling to increase the total number in its nursing ranks; this is, essentially, an international shortage.

However, the mistakes made by the Tories were so egregious, and so sustained, it was patently obvious that when their government was dethroned in the 2023 election, progress would be measured in years, not months.

The most charitable analysis for the Kinew government is it has not had enough time to make a bigger dent in a problem that has grown larger since it took power. That perspective doesn’t absolve the NDP from the obligation to fulfil its promise to build a more effective health-care system with greater capacity. But it does add some context.

It should be noted the Kinew government arguably could have done more in the roughly 18 months it has been in power. However, political decisions to indulge in broad-based tax cuts — education and gas taxes, in particular — drained hundreds of millions of much-needed dollars from the provincial treasury.

The lost revenue is particularly frustrating, given that there is a strong argument that a province such as Manitoba may have to pay at or above top salary levels to retrain and recruit more nurses. In a national and continental war for talent, a smaller jurisdiction cannot afford to skimp on incentives.

Additional efforts seem to be ongoing. The province claims it has responded to many of the recommendations in a February white paper produced by the MNU. As well, Asagwara is awaiting further recommendations on establishing firm patient-nurse ratios, an approach used with some success in other provinces to alleviate the unsustainable workload nurses currently face.

Much has been done since 2023 but so much more is needed. There is reason to be hopeful the current government — which has a natural political affinity with nurses — will make more improvements in subsequent years.

But as the NDP moves forward, it should keep in mind one unambiguous fact: the nurses are watching your every move.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca