Nurses Union calls on City Council to be allies in implementing nurse-to-patient ratios

The BC Nurses Union is calling on the City to help how they can to implement nurse-to-patient ratios in the community.

At last night’s (Monday) meeting, Prince George City Council heard a presentation from the Lobby Coordinator of the BC Nurses Union, Raelene Stevenson.

“We are a member-driven organization, and our members asked for this,” Stevenson said.

“During bargaining, our members were surveyed and the result was that 84 per cent of the nurses see a mandatory minimum nurse-patient ratio as a must-have.”

Stevenson noted they’ve tried many things to address the nursing shortage, but the problem has only gotten worse.

“Local governments have an important part to play in retaining and recruiting nurses using policy levers that make communities more attractive to nurses,” she said.

“These are factors that are not unique to the nursing profession, but make our communities better for everyone to live in. We are not the policy experts in these areas, but we do know that nurses are attracted to communities where housing, childcare, transportation and recreational opportunities are readily available and affordable.”

Stevenson also called on Council to be allies, and advocate to other levels of government to be on board with achieving the same goals.

“An example of the government’s provincial rural retention incentive, which provides up to $8,000 per year as a financial incentive to healthcare workers, including nurses, who live and work in rural and remote communities,” she said.

“However, Prince George has still been excluded from this initiative, even though our ER is still sitting at approximately a 70 per cent vacancy rate.”

Lastly, Stevenson asked Council to help with education on healthcare challenges in the community and what can be done to address them.”

Councillor Brian Skakun brought up the idea of being opted-out of the province’s short-term rental rules again.

“There’s a lot of out-of-town and out-of-province nurses that come here,” he said.

“You’d think in the long run it would be more economical to actually pay the nurses more, pay more for recruitment than bringing in out-of-town folks, I think that’s also an issue, and one thing we’ve talked about here is the short-term rentals, I think the province, we need to get them to exempt the short-term rental act, and allow healthcare workers to find good accommodations when they travel to Prince George if that’s the case.”

Councillor Kyle Sampson put forward a motion to refer the issue back to the City’s Standing Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs to be able to advocate on the issue, which was passed unanimously.