Whether by Neglect or Design or Both, Are the Ford Conservatives Taking Us Back To A Time Before Universal Health Care Champion Tommy Douglas, When Quality Health Care Is Only There For Those Who Can Afford to Pay For It?
A Comment by Linda McKellar, a retired health care nurse living in Niagara
Posted January 5th, 2024 on Niagara At Large
I have no idea where Ford is getting the thousands of new “nurses” he claims to have added to the system.
Are they RN’s, nurse practitioners, licensed practical nurses, personal support workers, orderlies? Is he even aware of the differences or does he hope the public is unaware of the differences?
Of course all categories are team members BUT the education and experience necessary to qualify for each is very different. The responsibilities and abilities are vastly different. The diagnostic and assessment skills are night and day.
The same with the ability to perform certain procedures, some life saving, and having enough pharmaceutical knowledge to safely dispense medications with consideration for untoward side effects and interactions.
Putting unqualified or under qualified workers in positions for which they are not trained is a recipe for disaster. That is not to denigrate any category of health care worker but some are just not trained to do particular jobs.
The staff and bed ration per capita in Ontario is ridiculous considering that it is considered the “economic” capital of the nation. The money is there but not being utilized properly. Beds are there but entire wings of hospitals and ER’s are closed.
Fort Erie for example has a population of about 32,000, many of whom are seniors, and is growing by leaps and bounds. Yet it has a 10am to 10pm urgent care centre. I have heard, although I cannot verify it, that the facility tries to cut off admissions after 8pm so they can vacate by 10pm.
In addition to that, everyone knows that Fort Erie is a lake effect blizzard region that can be completely isolated by winter storms.
By overburdening the public system and refusing them the compensation they deserve, health care workers are burning out and fleeing in droves, exacerbating the situation even more.
This paradigm opens the door for politicians beholden to private interests to say; ”Look, it isn’t working and we must replace it with a private system”.
This has been the goal for decades, ever since the national health system was established.
Athletes are heroes who get paid millions to play a game. Health care workers just improve and save lives.
How soon all of the sacrifices of COVID have been forgotten.
The public is also getting frustrated with the decreasing quality of care and is placing the blame on the health care workers who go home at night and cry, totally exhausted and feeling like they couldn’t do their job as it should have been done.
Who would want to work holidays, weekends, 12 hour nights and days in a pressure cooker if they could get a job in a nice clean private clinic at better pay, better hours and everything organized and neatly scheduled?
That is going to suck the most qualified and experienced out of the public system and into private clinics further crippling our treasured public system.
Two tier health care – One for the rich, the other for the poor and the average Joe and Jane.
Get out your VISA or MASTERCARD folks. You’re gonna’ need it.
A Footnote from Niagara At Large – This comment by Linda McKellar, a retired nurse who worked in Ontario’s publicly-funded hospital system for many year, was a response to a piece Niagara At Large (NAL) posted this past January 3rd, 2023’ (https://niagaraatlarge.com/2024/01/03/fords-conservatives-pushing-ontarios-health-care-workers-out-of-hospitals/ ).
NAL is posting Linda McKellar’s comment again – this time as a stand-alone piece -because there is good reason to believe that it reflects the views of many currently working health care professionals who are not in as secure a position to speak out publicly on the issues addressed here.
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When it involves health care, the environment/greenbelt and poverty/homelessness; Ford is an prime example of intentional incompetence.
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