Working conditions past breaking point, nurses say at rally

Nurses launched a post-election series of protests in St. John's Monday to remind the public about working conditions they say are only getting worse.

"It's a constant battle. You're always trying to do somebody else's job plus your own," said Paula Penney, who works at the Miller Centre in St. John's.

About 60 nurses participated in a rally outside the Health Sciences Centre to draw attention to workloads that nurses say have become untenable.

Nurses said they are hitting the wall with double shifts, double duty, harm to their personal lives and being rendered defenceless by their sense of duty.

"You feel for your patients and your co-workers. And you feel that you're needed in your work," Doreen Hawco-Mahoney said.

"So you just do it."

Penney said staffing shortages have become so acute at the Miller Centre, among other institutions, that a manager tried to call her back to work while she was grieving for her sister-in-law's death.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union, which will be organizing a series of protests across the province over the next three weeks, says things are bound to get more difficult because of a pending wave of retirements. Nurses say the human resources crisis has already struck hospitals and clinics.

"[From] what we saw this summer," president Debbie Forward said, "things have gotten worse very, very quickly."

Staffing shortages were so bad at some institutions this summerthat senior nurses could obtain only minimal vacation time.

The nurses' union is asking the provincial government to reopen a collective agreement that was concluded only in 2006. The contract expires next June.

Forward also wants the government to commit to jobs for new graduates and to step up recruitment efforts.