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Call to Action! Download a PDF Poster here Rally at Legislature on Florence Nightingale’s birthday Help present UNA’s Nursing Care Plan to government Come to the nursing rally at Noon, Monday, May 12, 2008 at the Legislative Assembly in Edmonton. Celebrate Nursing Week and Florence Nightingale’s birthday with ACTION to fix health care in Alberta. We will be presenting The Nursing Care Plan for Alberta Nursing to the Alberta go vernment. Tell the government: start a real plan to alleviate the nursing shortage! Shortage hurts health care services for Albertans The shortage of nurses and other health care providers is making Alberta patients wait longer, in more crowded conditions. It hurts our patients. See more... Hundreds of nurse vacancies Thousands eligible to retire The crisis has its roots in Alberta policy in the 1990s. In 1990, Alberta’s nursing programs graduated 898 RNs but that number had dropped to 440 by 1999. All the in-hospital nursing programs were closed and the educational institution nursing programs were not expanded enough to make up the difference. The nursing shortage is international, but poor policy in Alberta made it extreme here.  See more... The nursing and health professional shortage is hurting Albertans and their health care. Government has made inadequate announcements on dealing with the crisis. Nurses right across the province are gravely concerned that conditions in our health system will only worsen without more action immediately. United Nurses of Alberta is developing a Nursing Care Plan for Alberta Nursing to present to Alberta’s Health and Wellness Minister at a special Rally on Florence Nightingale’s birthday, Monday, May 12. “It is urgent that government act now, and there are things we can do to reduce the shortage,” says UNA President Heather Smith. “Resources and innovative management can do a great deal to reduce the array of problems creeping into our health system because of personnel shortages. We do need to “grow our own” by educating nurses and other health workers, but that takes years. We need action now.” Nurses working to end the shortage The nurses’ union has been pushing hard to keep Alberta competitive and attractive to nurses. “We are doing what we can to stem the crisis,” says UNA President Heather Smith. “But most important of all is to advocate for broad, system-wide action to deal with the crisis.” “We will be bringing out the details on what we call “the nursing care plan for Alberta nursing,” Heather Smith said. “Our system is unwell, and with a good plan, we can help it recover,” she said. The nursing shortage is in many ways itself the worst cause of the nursing shortage. Units that run short-staffed have high stress levels. That’s one of the reasons nurses don't work more shifts. And the worse it gets, the fewer shifts nurses are able to handle. It's been a downward spiral as we watch more nurses move to part-time. The spiral must be reversed.  Reducing workloads and stress levels with more nurses working will help. But, that is hard to do when we do not have more nurses to add to hire. We need to look at ways to encourage part-time nurses to increase their FTE and take on more shifts. Managers need to set higher, survivable and sustainable staffing levels and reduce workloads.