June 6, 2019

MAY 14, 2019 – The Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec – FIQ acknowledges the government’s announcement to set up a committee of experts to develop a residential and long-term care policy. “There are major discrepancies between the services offered and the needs in residential and long-term care. While this approach may leave us perplexed, we will give the government the benefit of the doubt. However, one thing is clear, while the government may want its own residential and long-term care policy, patients and healthcare professionals cannot wait months, or even years, before things change,” said Nancy Bédard, FIQ President.

The Federation is shocked that there are no seats reserved for experts from the field on the committee. “Despite the fact that Minister Blais said she would like to conduct a broad consultation, the most important thing would have been to include someone who literally works in the industry on the committee of experts. It would give the committee the perspective of someone who works with patients on a daily basis,” continued Ms. Bédard.

The FIQ would also like to remind the government that many observations and recommendations have been made regarding living conditions and best practices in CHSLDs in the last few years. “We don’t need one more report to be issued only to end up on a shelf with no follow-up. It’s time to turn words into action,” said the FIQ President.

The power to change things starting now

The FIQ strongly believes that implementing safe healthcare professional-to-patient ratios would quickly and significantly improve living conditions for patients in residential centres. “Healthcare professionals’ workloads are so heavy that more often than not they only have time to focus on essential care and have no choice but to put patients’ psychological and social needs on the back-burner. We don’t need a policy on residential and long-term care in order to know we need to put human warmth back into caring for humans,” concluded Ms. Bédard.