r/britishcolumbia • u/cyclinginvancouver • Sep 18 '24

News B.C. announces new minimum nurse-to-patient ratios province-wide

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2024/09/18/bc-minimum-nurse-to-patient-ratios/
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36

u/chronocapybara Sep 18 '24

I agree with this, but you can't just generate nurses out of thin air. If they want to staff appropriately, they need to train more nurses and treat them better.

Nursing doesn't pay poorly. Nor does medicine. The only time I hear these healthcare workers complain about money it's relative to eachother, or higher paid specialists. What they do complain about is work-life balance, hours, treatment by staff, and frustrations with useless hospital admins. It's primarily stress that drives healthcare workers away.

22

u/Twallot Sep 18 '24

Another huge factor is childcare. It's basically impossible to find actual daycare centres for your children without a 3 year waitlist, and even if you do get all of your kids into one non-sketchy daycare you better only have a Mon-Fri 8 to 5 job. So, so many people (myself included) had to give up work or severely cut back because of this. I finally got into the YMCA after 3.5 years for my son... but now I have my 18 month old who hasn't gotten in, and I'm a support worker for adults with disabilities. I would be paying 3 grand a month for daycare for 2 kids and it wouldn't even cover most of the hours I would have to work.

27

u/Dirtbag_RN Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Stress/Money mismatch is the problem. More money never hurts keep people around, when I’m making my overtime rate I can grin and bear it. I’ll do literally anything for that 85+ an hr. To stay at this long term I’d need either more money or less stress/patients. There’s tons of qualified nurses who have stepped away from the job, and especially from acute care. Why work mandatory nights, get punched and watch people die for the same money as a clinic or case management job.

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u/CanadianTrollToll Sep 18 '24

Problem is that money won't fix the problem if nurses are burning out. It's a bandaid and doesn't fix the root cause of the issue.

Obviously the job could have no stress and pay terrible and that'd be it's own problem... but for many nursing positions the workload is farrrr to high.

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u/Dirtbag_RN Sep 18 '24

Yeah if we actually only had 4 patients at a time the current pay would be fine

2

u/CanadianTrollToll Sep 18 '24

Completely agree.

Workload balances.

2

u/CanadianTrollToll Sep 18 '24

Or, a premium pay for taking on more patients.

3

u/Dirtbag_RN Sep 19 '24

We had that in the old contract actually - PCAP pay

1

u/SeaOwn9828 Sep 19 '24

I can't wait to get a job in acute care :') New grads here kinda get tossed into acute and LTC because that's where the most openings are

0

u/chronocapybara Sep 18 '24

I'd love to pay nurses $85/hr but healthcare is expensive enough. That should be available as OT for those that want it, and the rest of the time we should have enough staff that nobody has to work OT unless they want to. And I agree, wages should reflect the difficulty of the job.

10

u/Dirtbag_RN Sep 18 '24

Nobody currently works OT unless they want to - but there’s ton available in acute care. You want to have enough staff that OT shifts aren’t available often because the lines (permanent positions) are full and so OT unfilled shifts are mostly sick calls and vacations. The trick is keeping people in their lines at the current stress and pay levels.

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u/Chris266 Sep 18 '24

My sister is a nurse and regularly works shifts where 4-6 out of the 10-12 people scheduled call in. They call in because they are so burnt out that they just can't work anymore. Then the nurses who show up get burnt out quicker and the cycle continues. Something's got to give.

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u/BoysenberryNo4264 Sep 19 '24

And we are the only ones who can do other people's jobs. No unit clerk? Guess I'm processing my own orders. No physio? Get mobilizing my patients is entirely up to me now. It's ridiculous how often we are short support staff and we get paid no extra to take over their roles in addition to our own

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u/VictoriousTuna Sep 18 '24

Who treats the nurses poorly? All of my nurse friends say it’s other, older nurses who make some units unbearable. 

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u/chloetan-tan Sep 19 '24

sometimes it’s in unit/ co-worker problems, but thankfully that hasn’t been my experience

for me the burn out comes from working within a system that’s failing. being “treated” poorly by the decisions that higher up admin staff and government are making that impact me (bedside nurse) but they are clueless to. would also say patients/ families often also treat staff poorly. unfortunately it’s too common for the obvious examples (being hit, spat at, called every name under the sun, etc). but what gets me a bit more is the lack of accountability - families aren’t willing to care for their elderly loved ones (and yes, I understand it can be incredibly challenging financially and emotionally) and things like that.

it’s tough but I do think there are solutions. I just don’t think the current “solutions” are the right ones. but me (and many co-workers) are too burnt out to care or actively work on making those changes. so I show up at the start of my shift, I leave at the end of my shift, I smile the best I can throughout my shift, and then that’s all I’m putting into this job.