Members of the United Nurses of Alberta rallied across the province on Saturday, Jan. 25. The "day of action" commemorated the 1988 nurses strike, but attendees in St. Albert also used the occasion to call for better working conditions and better wages.
Nurses and supporters gathered at the south side of Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert late Saturday morning to commemorate the strike 37 years ago, when 14,000 nurses walked off the job across Alberta.
"It's just a day for nurses to gather in solidarity," said registered nurse and Local 85 union president Orissa Shima. "We are in a bargaining. So we're just trying to draw attention to the situations that we're facing in the hospital, to your bargaining, and just trying to build some solidarity as we head into formal mediation."
Shima has been a nurse for 24 years, and currently works at Sturgeon Community Hospital. She thinks nurses are closer to going on strike than she has ever seen in her career.
"As we enter formal mediation, if talks break down, that will put us in a position to strike," she said. "And so we just need to build solidarity and strength and kind of bring awareness," adding that she wanted to make sure the public knew it wasn't just about contract negotiations, but also about the deteriorating care conditions in the hospital.
"We have hallway nursing here at Sturgeon, every single shift," she said. "We have EMS dropping off patients in alcoves, hallways. These are not care spaces. We stuff stretchers in between beds, and we call that a care space, and we don't add any nurses to look after these patients."
She said she had heard about these care conditions happening in big-city hospitals like Edmonton or Calgary, but it's now become a daily occurrence at Sturgeon, something she hadn't seen before in her 24 year career.
Kaylah Berard and Sam Godziuk, two nurses who work at Sturgeon, said nurses don't have the resources to be able to provide the best care for their patients.
"It's very disheartening when you're trying to provide the best care for everyone, and everything's stretched so thin," Berard said.
"That's our main goal for Albertans. But it's hard when we don't have enough funding, enough staffing, enough resources to adequately take care of people the way that they deserve," Godziuk said.
Berard said she doesn't see hallway nursing in her department, but did at the University of Alberta Hospital where she worked in general surgery.
"I think it's just very unsafe, because there wasn't a lot of stipulations that needed to be in effect in order for a patient to be qualified to be a hallway patient," Berard said.
She said when a patient is being seen in the hallway, nurses often don't have access to things like "oxygen, suction or anything to properly do your job."
When asked about reports of hallway nursing taking place at Sturgeon Community Hospital, Alberta Health Services said in an emailed statement, "AHS is committed to the bargaining process and values its dedicated employees who deliver high-quality patient care. We have no further comment at this time."
Shima said nurses turned down a mediator recommendation in October as it didn't address their concerns.
"It did not address the concerns of nurses in terms of wages, in terms of working conditions, and nurses said 'no.' So, we're back at the table," she said.
"We're dealing with a tough government on the other side of the table, and we're having challenges in meeting the expectations of nurses across the province," Local 85 vice-president Paul Graham said. "It looks like more than ever we need to be united in our bargaining, and we're hoping for a good resolution."
As passing sounded their horns in support of the demonstration, Shima said it was nice to see that level of public support amid the backdrop of tense negotiations.
"There's days when you're in the hospital where you don't feel supported by the employer or supported by the government. But patients and families see how hard you're working," she said. "That's what fills your bucket as a nurse."
