Health-care solutions start closer to home By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Mar. 10, 2023

Opinion

Success stories in Manitoba’s health-care system are so hard to find, the provincial government travelled halfway around the world to look for one.

Audrey Gordon, Manitoba’s health minister, declared victory March 1 after returning to Winnipeg from a recruitment trip in the Philippines, where a team travelled to search for more nurses to work in the province’s hospitals, clinics and long-term care centres.

A five-day mission to the Asian nation — which included Jon Reyes, Manitoba’s labour and immigration minister, and Ken Borce, chief of clinical operations at CancerCare Manitoba, both of whom are of Filipino descent — found 350 registered nurses, licensed practical equivalents and health-care aides who committed to moving to Manitoba.

It’s a mystery if the recruits were told working in Manitoba hospitals was a path to prosperity — nurses in the Philippines earn a fraction of their Canadian counterparts — or clued in to the province’s grim reality: they will fill jobs vacated by nurses burned out by back-breaking levels of overtime and a health-care system in crisis.

The environment some Manitoba nurses work in — not to mention the level of care Manitobans expect to receive at the province’s hospitals — came to light once again a day before Ms. Gordon’s announcement.

A man died in an emergency-room hallway while awaiting treatment at Health Sciences Centre Feb. 28, an hour after arriving at the hospital in an ambulance.

The hospital launched an investigation, but on March 2, officials said the emergency room was confronting an extreme backlog of patients waiting to be admitted that day, which led staff to enact “over-capacity protocols.”

The Manitoba Nurses Union said several nurses were working overtime that night, and among the 40 people in the ER waiting room, some had waited more than 20 hours to be admitted.

The incident shows Manitoba needs all the nurses it can get, but the provincial government must realize the questionable ethics of luring nurses from other countries such as the Philippines can be a two-way street.

To that end, the College of Registered Nurses in Manitoba has issued warnings about the province’s doctors and nurses being lured eastward after Ontario announced in February it would introduce legislation to recognize credentials from other provinces in an attempt to speed up recruitment for its hospitals.

The incident shows Manitoba needs all the nurses it can get, but the provincial government must realize the questionable ethics of luring nurses from other countries such as the Philippines can be a two-way street.

Years of austerity under Premier Heather Stefanson and her predecessor, Brian Pallister, have already seen nurses and other health-care staff seek jobs elsewhere or flee the profession altogether, especially after a succession of long, difficult shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“No one is coming to Manitoba, with the wages in Manitoba this far behind,” Jason Linklater, the president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, said in a Free Press story in January.

Days after the PC government announced a budget that provides only a token bump to the health-care system after years of tight-fisted control over finances, an investigation confirmed the HSC death was a critical incident, underscoring how dangerous the situation in Manitoba’s hospitals has become.

Until the provincial government properly funds its hospitals, clinics and long-term health facilities, and the staff that work in them, we will have to accept these kinds of tragedies as a part of life in Manitoba.

The influx of health-care staff from the Philippines may provide a tourniquet to a system at risk of bleeding out, but to tout it as a success disregards the severity of the wounds.