Nurses call for national strategy on seniors’ health care

Canada’s nurses are calling for a national strategy that ensures seniors have access to care while reducing the impact on the public health system.

“Nurses and health-care workers are stretched too thinly, and Canada’s population is aging,” Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas said in a news release Friday after meeting with provincial and territorial health ministers in Winnipeg.

“It’s time to act.”

The federation called for a national human resources plan to help address staffing challenges, pointing to a Canadian Institute for Health Information report showing more than three million overtime hours clocked by long-term care workers over a one-year period — the equivalent of 1,500 full-time providers.

“We’ve been talking about a crisis in health human resources, a nursing shortage, since the pandemic,” Silas said in an interview.

“Today, with all the efforts that governments are making — federally to provincially — we’re still talking about a nursing shortage.”

The federation that includes the Manitoba Nurses Union met Thursday in Winnipeg with federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel.

On Wednesday, Michel announced a one-year extension to a 10-year, $1.2-billion funding agreement for mental health, substance use, home and community care that was set to expire at the end of March.

The nurses called on the federal minister to ensure that health-care funding stabilizes long term and to track health transfers to the provinces intended for home care and nurse recruitment and retention.

“When the federal government gives funding for home care we have to make sure that it goes towards home care — that it goes directly to the care, the patient’s needs. It’s transparency that is needed and not just lump funding,” Silas told the Free Press.

Michel also announced a federal commitment of up to $6 million over three years for Manitoba to hire 90 more internationally educated doctors, especially physicians with emergency medicine experience, who can work in rural and northern areas.

The need for more nurses in the province is just as acute, MNU president Darlene Jackson said.

“We are desperately needing nurses out in the rural and northern regions, too,” she said Thursday, adding Michel was told about the need to recruit more nurses to Manitoba.

“We need that support for nurses, as well, because with no nurses, there’s no health care.”

Jackson said the meeting also included a discussion on the need to bolster home care in Manitoba and to provide guaranteed service under the Canada Health Act.

On Friday morning, CFNU presented a report entitled “Healthy aging, dignified care” to the country’s health ministers. The 51-page document describes Denmark’s “person-centred” seniors care, which includes staffing standards, prevention and rehabilitation programs and treatment for memory issues.

“It doesn’t matter how much support you need — if you want to be at home, you are supported in your home,” Jackson said. “It is cost-effective. It’s also great patient care because, at the end of the day, I don’t want to be forced into a long-term care facility if I am able to manage at home with supports, and that’s where people want to be.”

Jackson said Michel indicated Thursday that there’s a lot of flexibility in the Canada Health Act.

“She did seem to like the idea of having home care as a guaranteed service,” the union president said.

“We wouldn’t have people waiting in a hospital bed for three weeks to go home with home care. The wait times in emergency are getting longer and longer and longer. What does it cost to have somebody in a hospital bed, an acute-care bed, for three weeks rather than being supported in their home?”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

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