February 11, 2019

The FIQ – Syndicat des professionnelles en soins de la Capitale-Nationale (FIQ-SPSCN) is asking Health Minister Danielle McCann to allocate funding to alleviate the healthcare professional shortage that’s been afflicting the Charlevoix region for several years and creating increasing mandatory overtime.

“We’ve done everything zero-cost possible to address the critical staff shortage in Charlevoix,” said Patricia Lajoie, FIQ-SPSCN President. “Locally, in the past few years, directors have focused increasing energy on recruiting healthcare professionals, and our members, wanting to help, joined the effort to seek solutions, but in vain,” added Ms. Lajoie.

Despite their efforts, laments the union, mandatory overtime is becoming more and more frequent. Out of 203 grievances filed to date at the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale over mandatory overtime, 165 are from the Charlevoix region. “We can’t ask our healthcare professionals to extend themselves any further—they’ve reached their limit—and are about to snap,” said Pierre Olivier Bradet, FIQ-SPSCN Vice-President.

The union reports witnessing decreasing interest in the profession, as evidenced by the cancellation of the last nursing cohort at the Cégep de la Malbaie. “They are currently 25 full-time nurses short. Nurses could come work in this region and have full-time positions. 25 nurses translates into 3,750 hours of care per month. That’s huge! Those hours currently fall to the 360 healthcare professionals in Charlevoix who already work full time,” said Mr. Bradet.

Ms. McCann must help the Charlevoix region to ensure the sustainability of public health care and preserve the health of its healthcare professionals. The union would like to see the following measures promptly implemented:

Recruitment-retention premium

The union says there’s competition with the city of Quebec, which has university hospitals, universities and family services which offer a ton of services. It sees a recruitment-retention premium as something that will help keep healthcare professionals in the region and recruit others.

DEP-DEC transition

The union believes that substantial financial assistance would allow licensed practical nurses in the region to transition from a DEP to a DEC to become nurses and fill vacant positions.

Respiratory therapist clinical practice

The union believes that funding should be allocated to development projects to enable respiratory therapists to take on a greater role in caring for patients when assessing their cardio-respiratory condition in specialized settings, such as emergency rooms and short-term care units. It would help to boost interprofessional collaboration and optimize respiratory therapists’ and nurses’ scopes of practice.