By Lethbridge Herald on January 27, 2025.
Alexandra Noad – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A couple dozen people gathered at the Chinook Regional Hospital on a chilly Saturday morning to commemorate the 1988 strike that saw more than 14,000 hospital nurses walk off the job amid demands from health regions for wage rollbacks and other concessions from the United Nurses of Alberta.
Today, 37 years later, nurses are still overworked, underpaid and many unions have unsigned contracts, says Susan Shelton, first vice-president for the local 120 United Nurses of Alberta (UNA).
She says every Albertan is being affected by how the government is treating health care workers.
“We want (government) to focus on every Albertan and what’s best in health care for them,” says Shelton. “I feel like everyone’s done a really good job of chasing doctors out of the province, which increases our wait times in clinics, hospitals, emergency departments, and we just really need them to refocus their priorities back to the public.”
It’s estimated that some 40 per cent of people in Lethbridge are without a family doctor, which means if they get sick, their only options for care are walk-in clinics or the hospital emergency room.
Shelton, who works in the emergency department at CRH, says the lack of family doctors not only makes ER waiting times longer, but it is also affecting the quality of care
“We’ve seen our waiting times go up exponentially, which is really frustrating if you’re waiting to see a physician. But with our doctor’s shortage, we have (fewer) physicians working in our emergency department, so we don’t have the intense coverage that we used to.”
Nurses see members of the public every single day and Shelton says, while she understands their frustration, she and her fellow nurses bear the brunt of the public frustration. It’s not easy to handle.
“(Nurses) are the faces out there all the time,” she says. “There’s more nurses than doctors working in the emergency department, so when you want to banter or something, we tend to get the brunt of that frustration.”
Shelton believes no matter your political affiliation, public health care and public education are very important to the success of Alberta.
“I know we voted for a conservative government, so wherever your political lines are drawn, public health care, public education is really, really important to the success of Alberta and we need our government to refocus their efforts back into health care.”
While UNA is not currently on strike, it was clear at the rally that nurses are tired of the government not listening to their needs.
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