Some nurses still don’t have proper COVID-19 personal protective equipment: union

OTTAWA - When information of the primary instances of COVID-19 started cropping up in Canada in early 2020, Linda Silas was one of many first to ring alarm bells in regards to the lack of correct private protecting gear for well being employees.

Whereas early indications confirmed the virus was unfold by droplets that settled on surfaces, Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses, urged well being authorities to be taught from the SARS outbreak of 2003 and take the very best stage of precaution.

Now she is aware of she was proper — the virus is airborne — however she continues to be desperately calling for extra protecting gear for nurses two years later.

Regional unions throughout the nation report that nurses who've requested fit-tested respirators nonetheless can’t get them in some instances, regardless of the Omicron variant being way more transmissible than earlier variants.

The scarcity of wholesome nurses to deal with the huge wave of the Omicron variant has meant hospitals and different well being establishments have deployed nurses with confirmed instances of COVID-19, and nonetheless some will not be provided acceptable masks, she stated.

“These weak sufferers may need a COVID optimistic employees treating them, and with out the right PPE it’s plain harmful,” she stated.

Canada’s chief public well being officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, describes the unfold of COVID-19 as a cloud of smoke coming from somebody’s mouth and nostril. She and different medical officers have urged the general public use simpler masks to guard themselves.

Silas stated typically in locations corresponding to vaccine clinics, members of the general public appear higher outfitted with the right protecting gear than the well being employees.

“It’s a mishmash, and it’s a struggle,” Silas stated in an interview with The Canadian Press. “In long-term care it’s an actual struggle, in group care it’s an actual struggle and in acute care it relies upon the place you're employed.”

Completely different hospitals appear to be taking completely different approaches in relation to offering PPE to nurses, which doesn’t make sense, she stated, “as a result of the science is the science.”

Canada’s provide chain is prone to blame, stated College of Windsor professor Anne Snowdon, a registered nurse who research well being techniques and provide chains.

“The issue has all the time been the provision chain. The result of the constraints of our provide chain is just not with the ability to entry these protecting merchandise which might be so vital by way of decreasing the chance of transmission of this virus to our workforce, and likewise to our sufferers,” Snowdon stated in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The scarce provide of PPE might have been extra comprehensible within the early days of the pandemic, however critics like Silas query how Canada might nonetheless be in an analogous state of affairs in lots of elements of the well being system.

The reply, Snowdon stated, is that the infrastructure was so poor to start with.

“We’re constructing the bridges we’re driving over,” she stated.

Tam stated hospital outbreaks are occurring, with each well being employees and sufferers contracting the extremely contagious virus in acute care settings like hospitals.

“It actually does proceed to emphasize the necessity for good an infection prevention management practices, nevertheless it’s been very, very tough,” Tam stated at a briefing Friday.

“That is such a transmissible virus that now we have to up our sport all over the place, together with masks carrying, air flow and the whole lot else as a way to scale back these dangers. Well being care setting-related outbreaks are one thing that we should always do the whole lot to attempt to decrease.”

In different sectors, like development, important employees wouldn't be in the identical state of affairs, Silas stated, as a result of they might have the correct to refuse to work in unsafe circumstances.

However well being employees can’t do the identical with out the moral guilt of abandoning sufferers. It’s the identical guilt that has nurses working 16 to 24-hour shifts, or taking up massive affected person hundreds, she stated.

“It’s that moral guilt that presses on the health-care workforce.”

In Quebec, unions representing nurses additionally expressed concern that N95 masks will not be robotically given to nurses by their employers. They stated this was notably vital because the province has dominated that some nurses who've examined optimistic for COVID-19 however haven't any signs can go to work to deal with sufferers with the virus.

Julie Bouchard, president of the Fédération Interprofessionnelle de la Santé du Québec, a Quebec union representing nurses and respiratory therapists, stated she was anxious that N95s weren't accessible to all nurses in Quebec to guard them from the Omicron variant.

“Confronted with a way more contagious variant, we stepped up our interventions to remind the federal government and CNESST (Quebec’s office security physique) that it was their duty to use the precautionary precept and to implement all the mandatory measures, beginning with entry to the N95 masks, for all caregivers to guard them and their weak sufferers,“ she stated.

“Nevertheless, the federal government continues to be sluggish to adjust to the CNESST directives, in addition to to make sure that the N95s can be found within the discipline.”

NDP well being spokesman Daniel Blaikie known as on the federal authorities to offer nurses a pandemic pay bonus to acknowledge their key position in combating the Omicron wave.

The NDP stated, although well being coverage is set by provinces, “hero pay” for nurses could be potential if the Liberal authorities wished to deliver it in.

It stated in the course of the first COVID-19 wave the federal authorities launched a fund to assist provinces and territories supply a hazard bonus to important employees corresponding to nurses.

This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Jan. 14, 2022.