We hear that Dr. Stephen Duckett is now concerned about on-the-job injuries in Alberta Health Services.
After spending so much time demoralizing AHS staff, it is hard to believe his concerns are anything but financial, even though he reportedly claims, “I don’t think the public realizes the stress on our workers and the things that happen in our health facilities.”
If anything, I’d say the public have a pretty good appreciation of the stress on health-care workers.
Anyone who’s had family hospitalized in the past couple of years has probably also been an active caregiver.
In the absence of sufficient staff, many of the public are lifting loved ones, feeding them, changing them, walking them to the shower or bathing them in a hospital setting — for no compensation and no injury coverage.
There’s a fairly quick and easy cure for many of the issues of heavy lifting injuries to staff and to violence from patients. Call in the men.
Once upon a time, most the hospital wards had a significant, visible complement of male orderlies and nurses. Due to a man’s superior upper body strength and higher levels of testosterone, heavy lifting was relatively easy for these guys, as was subduing aggressive or violent patients.
Here in the town of Ponoka, my petite mother was the first female ward aide back in the 1960s to work on an all-male patient ward at AHP (now the Centennial Center with the very long name). But now health-care jobs have been feminized.
This has led to a reduction in wages. Women work for less than men — so the system thinks it is a saving. But they are also not built for heavy lifting or subduing psychotic patients.
Recruitment has focused on women and female immigrants. Look at the http://www.carework.ca/ website and click through the female faces and the single token male image. You get the message loud and clear. This is a “girl job.”
Yet once male orderlies and male nurses were well-respected, well paying jobs.
Today the oil rigs give the guys lots of work, money, status and power. So what guy would choose health care when the image of it has been so feminized and the financial rewards are less competitive?
Likewise, the system has become more obtuse when it comes to hiring men.
Hospitals want men who think and act like women, which men don’t. Hire the guys for what they are very good at — heavy lifting and helping male patients with male patient care.
Recent changes to hiring policies also exclude hiring people with a criminal record — something lots of guys have acquired in their early adulthood.
On the surface, this general rule seems to make sense when you are talking about “persons in care.” However most of us have a cousin, brother, uncle, father who got into a stupid fight at some point in their youth and ended up with an assault charge. Does that mean they are a threat to others? Especially if they are all grown up now?
I know of cases of perfectly competent male cooks (who would be far away from bed-ridden, vulnerable patients) who have been shut out of hospital or care facility work due to these policies. Is it fair that their criminal record, which reflects only one incident long past, is a damning judgment for all time when weighed against subsequent years of law-abiding, constructive, hard-working behaviour?
Time to reinstitute discriminatory hiring — reinstate the career of male orderly.
Admit that most men have more physically powerful upper body strength for lifting; admit that guys who know how to fight can probably quell violent patients quicker than a flock of women. Pay a competitive salary to men for this work and modify the hiring rules to assess criminal records on a case-by-case basis.
Make sure that health-care aide recruitment websites and strategies show big, healthy, tall, strong men in navy, white or black uniforms, standing, smiling and working alongside those pretty women dressed in pastel scrubs.
And don’t wait for these guys to come knocking on your door Dr. Duckett. Get out there and start recruiting from high school, college and university football, hockey and wrestling teams. You want to cut $13.2 million in injury compensation claims?
Men are up to the challenge. Are you?
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a Ponoka freelance columnist.