PBON Blog
Give Nurses the Respect and Recognition They Deserve
Tue, Mar 10, 2020 4:00 PM GMT
It’s no secret that being a nurse is not easy; it’s demanding, stressful and consists of long/irregular hours. Nurses comprise the largest health care occupation in Canada, as they work in various capacities. The common mindset that nurses were employed to only administer sponge baths and do menial tasks has tremendously evolved, and people understand that a nurses job is much more important now. However, when it comes to truly understanding just how much nurses do, most people cannot conceptualize the degree of expertise and knowledge required to be a nurse and administer the job to its full capacity.
Nurses are the life and soul of the healthcare industry, they provide care, kindness and comfort. They are on the frontlines providing ongoing treatment, spending the most time with patients to truly evaluate their ongoing condition and ensure the utmost quality of care. Not only this, but nurses provide emotional support and counsel patients and their families through their diagnosis and treatments, being a pillar of stability. Nurses do this while often working through holidays, nights and weekends.
Being a nurse is demanding, but when you ask a nurse? It’s a rewarding one.
Why not, in return, reward nurses for this important, irreplaceable work that they do?
The Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), founded in 1973 has been continuously fighting to improve the Nursing occupation, with the biggest improvement in the collective bargaining being wage increases. There have been improvements in the shift premiums for nurses, however, there’s a long way to go to make it truly rewarding.
Despite the gradual wage increase, nurses are still not compensated nearly as much as they should be and as other health care professionals are which the union still works toward improving. Also, there aren’t nearly as many jobs for RNs in Ontario as are needed. As cited in the Hamilton Spectator in an article by Frketich, Ontario has the worst number of RNs per patient of any province in Canada. With a lack of hospital funding, there has been about 1600 RN positions cut from hospitals, public health, long term care and the community. Moreover, violence has been common in hospitals around Ontario and since nurses are on the frontlines, it is more than often directed towards them. The government is working with the unions to prevent workplace violence in the health care sector.
In the Ontario Nurses’ Associations fight against improving conditions in the workplace for nurses, PBON has provided their support to the union, by helping them get in contact with influential government officials who could help them get their interests heard and implemented. PBON executives and staff also stood by in the 2019 strike of Windsor-Essex County Health Unit Nurses, joining them when they went to the Tecumseh town hall to present a petition to Gary McNamara, chair of the public health unit’s board. Following the negotiation process, the union won an annual 1.5% pay raise for three years, for a total of 4.5, along with increased family medical leave and a provision to prohibit discrimination.
It was a great feat achieved, however the work is not done in getting nurses all the recognition and rights they need. PBON executives will keep working alongside and supporting the union’s interests to help nurses on an ongoing basis.