March 5, 2003
Money isn’t the big issue for nurses … patient safety is
United Nurses of Alberta is asking for a cost-of-living increase in salaries in current negotiations—money is not the major issue, says David Harrigan, UNA’s chief negotiator. “We are very surprised at the 22% increase number that the Provincial Health Authorities of Alberta (PHAA) has released,” Harrigan says. “Calculating costs depends on a great many variables, and the Employers have not told us how they reach this number. We suppose that if they continued to order nurses in to work overtime a great deal, it might add up to as much as 22% for some nurses. But we think it has to be a priority to avoid those overtime costs, for Employers and for the nurses who end up working all those extra hours.”
According to Employer numbers, nurses in Alberta are working as much as 30,000 hours of overtime a week, which is very costly for the health system and tiring for the nursing workforce.
“We don’t think Albertans believe it’s a good idea to be cared for by tired nurses who are working so much overtime,” Harrigan says. “The Employers’ solution so far is to reclassify overtime as not overtime, but that does nothing for the fatigue level for nurses.”
Last week UNA released the results of research studies that show increasing the workload on nurses increases risks to patients. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that for some surgical wards adding just one patient to a nurse’s responsibility increases the risk of dying by 7%.
UNA maintains that adequate registered nurse staffing, and not depending on overtime is the real solution to both cost and quality of care problems.
UNA has proposed negotiating minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, safe standards for nursing care that protect patients and help to keep nurses workloads from becoming stressful and extreme.
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