Urgent care nurses demand extra pay offered to ER counterparts

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This article was published 09/09/2021 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Urgent care nurses are pushing for a pandemic pay boost equal to what’s given to ER nurses as they continue to care for a higher volume of sicker patients.

Letters to their union, which were signed by more than 85 nurses at three urgent care facilities in Winnipeg — Victoria, Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals — say they undergo the same training as emergency department nurses but are excluded from the $6-per-hour COVID-19 premium. They’re calling for equal pay amid all-time-high wait times and increasingly common “hallway medicine.”

The premium has caused a rift between nurses in different workplaces who deal with critically ill patients. All want to be treated fairly, one senior urgent care nurse in Winnipeg told the Free Press. She spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from her employer.

“It’s really not about the money, it’s just the fact that they’re creating a division and not listening to us,” the nurse said.

Shared Health and the WRHA initially offered pandemic premiums last year to nurses working in ICUs, in personal care homes and on units where there were active COVID-19 outbreaks. In August, it was extended to emergency-room nurses working in short-staffed departments as their union negotiated a new contract with the employer.

The urgent care nurses say they’ve been left out of the pay premium even though they regularly treat COVID-19 patients and effectively “function as an ER” throughout the pandemic. The nurses feel undervalued and underappreciated despite working “tirelessly caring for COVID positive patients on a daily basis,” their letters say.

The premium for ER nurses was the result of a binding order issued by a mediator in confidential contract talks between the Manitoba Nurses Union and Shared Health.

The restructuring of Manitoba’s health-care system resulted in the closure of emergency departments at Victoria, Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals. They became urgent care centres and staff was expected to handle patients who were not ill enough to be in the ER.

The nurse who spoke to the Free Press said that’s not what happened. At the height of the second and third waves of the pandemic, urgent care centres dealt with the fallout of a shortage of ICU beds and overrun ERs.

“We’re still getting patients by ambulance or walking in who are still critically ill. Every shift during COVID, we were intubating somebody, like putting them on life-support, sometimes twice a shift. These were COVID-positive patients, but we don’t have the staff. We’re staffed one-quarter to half of what ERs are, but we were still having to manage these critically ill patients and wait to get them transferred out.”

The nurses forwarded the letters to the opposition NDP and media Wednesday after trying unsuccessfully to get one-on-one answers from the Manitoba Nurses Union, the nurse said.

The union said, in a statement attributed to president Darlene Jackson, it “is absolutely aware of how deserving each and every nurse is.”

“This pandemic has wreaked havoc on our front-line workers and exposed the deep inadequacies of our current health care system in Manitoba. Without concrete and immediate plans to address the critical nursing shortage though, we will continue to put Band-Aids on gaping wounds,” Jackson’s statement reads.

“If the province is serious (about) improving a very broken health-care system, (it) will recognize and value the crucial contribution of every nurse in this province and offer a fair contract before this situation is beyond repair.”

Shared Health is still negotiating with the nurses union. Last month’s pandemic pay premium was earmarked for nurses at the four Manitoba hospitals that have ICUs — HSC, St. Boniface, Grace and Brandon Regional Health Centre, the organization stated.

“As the ICU bed base was expanded to support COVID during the second and third waves, significant movement of nursing resources was required to support this area of need. These four (emergency departments) were directly affected and redeployment and reassignment were needed to support these efforts. The premium – provided to nurses reassigned, redeployed or working in these four (emergency departments) – reflects the specific impact caused by the significant movement of nursing resources within these facilities to support critical care,” Shared Health stated.

The urgent care nurses say they’ve been asked to pick up extra shifts in emergency departments. They provided several text messages from hospitals “desperately” seeking nurses to pick up shifts.

“This is making the staffing crisis in our health-care system worse,” NDP Leader Wab Kinew said. “We’re alienating nurses that we need to keep on the job.”

The Progressive Conservative government has a history of “trying to fight the pandemic on the cheap,” Kinew said, noting it initially excluded emergency department nurses from the front-line health workers eligible to receive the premium.

Not giving urgent care nurses the pay bump “is another sign of disrespect,” Kinew said.

“On a policy level, we’re ignoring one of the strongest tools — a financial incentive — that we have to address the staffing crisis. It’s very clear that nurses deserve a fair deal,” he said. “This government has to do better by nurses.”

In a statement, Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont called on the government to fairly compensate urgent care nurses and legislate mental burnout as an on-the-job injury that qualifies for workers compensation.

— with files from Carol Sanders

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Letter - urgent care nurses