United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) has filed a grievance in its pursuit to alleviate “critical staffing shortages” in the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre’s emergency department.
UNA recommends hiring at least 27 full-time registered nurses at the hospital’s emergency department.
The grievance was filed June 19, “after two years of working to get Alberta Health Services,” to resolve the issue, a media release states.
“It is important to understand that this is not a problem caused by a cluster of vacations, but by chronic under-staffing at this facility over a long period of time,” said UNA Labour Relations Director David Harrigan. “UNA has been attempting to resolve this staffing crisis in Red Deer for more than two years. We felt we had no choice but to file a formal grievance under our collective agreement to resolve both patient safety concerns our members have, and the workplace stress chronic under-staffing is causing.”
Over the weekend, the emergency department experienced staff shortages and longer wait times. Rob Swanson, executive director at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, said the shortage will be monitored by AHS this week.
But UNA does not believe it’s possible to fix the “months of chronic problems without significant new nursing hires.”
UNA’s grievance states that the employer, AHS, has failed to post vacancies in the Red Deer Regional Hospital emergency department, and that this has resulted in the past 10 weeks in mandatory overtime and additional shifts for registered nurses equivalent to 27 full-time positions. Even with the additional shifts, during the past month there have been just five days when the department was working to baseline, the grievance states.
As of June 6, 2018, there were 271 known vacant shifts in the schedule for the month of July, the UNA grievance added.
UNA states nurses employed at the hospital report receiving dozens of text messages in a day – putting them under pressure to work additional shifts.
“Despite this, the employer has posted no additional jobs to fill the vacancies,” the media release states.
“In addition to the problems it could cause for patients, this situation is causing burnout, fatigue and psychological distress to nurses,” said Margo Buss, vice-president of UNA Local 2 at the Red Deer Hospital and a registered nurse in the emergency department. “Our grievance argues the employer needs to provide safe and healthy working conditions.”
In addition to seeking 27 new positions, the grievance calls for:
– AHS to cease pressuring employees to work additional shifts
– The employer to close parts of the Emergency Department to allow safe staffing and inform the public it has done so
– AHS to review its hazard assessment of the department immediately to ensure psychological hazards are controlled in a situation of short staffing
– AHS to immediately stop using its automated callout system
UNA noted that AHS has already implemented one of the corrective actions the union requested, the posting of paramedics and ambulances in the department to transport prospective patients to other sites, Harrigan said.
United Nurses of Alberta is the union representing more than 30,000 Alberta registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses and allied health care workers.
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