BCNU Update Magazine October 2018

UPDATE OCTOBER 2018

M A G A Z I N E

ON A MISSION MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORL D

PLUS

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LEGAL ATTACK ON MEDICARE

CHANGE MAKER Christine Sorensen on activism, advocacy and leading the province’s largest health-sector union into the future

OPIOID CRISIS HAS NURSES CALLING FOR ACCESS TO SAFE DRUGS | IT’S TIME FOR A NATIONAL PHARMACARE PLAN | ENHANCED DISABILITY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM HELPS RESTART CAREERS

It’s time to test the recipe

WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY A SLICE? BCNU governance renewal process The right ingredients make all the difference. Members around the province have given their input on proposed changes to BCNU’s constitution and bylaws, and draft revisions are now ready to review. We want to make sure we’ve landed on a recipe for success.

ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE MIX! Visit the member portal at www.bcnu.org to provide your feedback today

CONTENTS

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DEPARTMENTS

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• OCTOBER 2018 17

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UPFRONT

PRESIDENT’S REPORT

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YOUR PENSION

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COUNCIL PROFILE

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WHO CAN HELP?

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VOL 37 NO3

6 CHECK IN The latest news from around the province.

12 DISABILITY MANAGEMENT WORKS Joint program is a model of collaboration and creativity.

OFF DUTY

15 FIGHTING FOR PHARMACARE BCNU signs on to consensus principles for a national drug plan.

17 MEDICARE ON TRIAL The truth behind the for-profit legal attack on public health care.

26 ON A MISSION Nurses are making a difference applying their skills in countries around the world.

34 ROCK BOTTOM Burnaby Hospital nurses use the professional responsibility process to secure needed staffing.

FEATURE

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CHANGE MAKER

BCNU President Christine Sorensen reflects on activism, advocacy and the challenge of leading the province’s largest health-sector union.

COVER PHOTO: PETER HOLST

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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MOVING? NEW EMAIL?

UPDATE M A G A Z I N E

MISSION STATEMENT The British Columbia Nurses’ Union protects and advances the health, social and economic well-being of our members, our profession and our communities.

BCNU UPDATE MAGAZINE is published by the BC Nurses’ Union, an independent Canadian union governed by a council elected by our 47,000 members. Signed articles do not necessarily represent official BCNU policies.

EDITOR Lew MacDonald CONTRIBUTORS Juliet Chang, Laura Comuzzi, Sharon Costello, Caroline Flink, Shawn Leclair, Robert MacQuarrie, Courtney McGillion, Umar Sheikh, Shaheen Shivji, Christine Sorensen, Dan Tatroff PHOTOS Will Cook, Shawn Leclair, Lew MacDonald, Doug Payette CONTACT US

STAY CONNECTED

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Send us your home email address and we’ll send you BCNU’s member eNews.

Please contact the membership department by email at membership@bcnu.org or by phone at 604-433-2268 or 1-800-663-9991

BCNU Communications Department 4060 Regent Street Burnaby, BC, V5C 6P5 PHONE 604.433.2268 TOLL FREE 1.800.663.9991 FAX 604.433.7945 TOLL FREE FAX 1.888.284.2222 BCNU WEBSITE www.bcnu.org EMAIL EDITOR lmacdonald@bcnu.org MOVING? Please send change of address to membership@bcnu.org Publications Mail Agreement 40834030 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to BCNU 4060 Regent Street Burnaby, BC, V5C 6P5

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OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

PRESIDENT’S REPORT RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

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PHOTO: PETER HOLST

CHRISTINE SORENSEN

URSES ARE NATURAL leaders – both at home and on the job. But it’s in times of crisis and hardship that we see the true value of nursing.

I’m proud of the stewards and activists who worked hard this summer to ensure their communities and workplaces are safe as can be.

Wildfires spread across much of the Interior and Vancouver Island this year, displacing communities and endangering lives. The acrid smoke and poor air quality also posed additional danger for seniors and our elderly patients.

Smaller rural and remote communities were again among the most affected by the fires.

Their limited resources meant they had to do more with less. Firefighters endured treacherous environments and emergency services – including nurses and first responders – worked hard to keep patients and residents safe.

I especially want to thank those nurses who joined the Emergency Health Provider Registry in order to help weary colleagues in affected communities who needed respite after weeks of intense work.

Workplace violence is another pattern that repeated itself this summer.

There continue to be far too many accounts of nurses being assaulted on the job.

Coquitlam’s Forensic Psychiatric Hospital has seen a number of serious assaults since May. Members working at the facility were physically harmed and many are still struggling with the psychological impacts of these incidents.

WorkSafeBC has acknowledged our previous concerns and levied several fines at this facility, yet the pattern continues.

But Forensics nurses’ ongoing reporting and advocacy is making a difference. We recently met with the employer and additional safety measures are now in place, including dedicated

security on high risk units. We’ll be monitoring this worksite closely and holding the health authority and Ministry of Health to the commitments they made to violence prevention during 2016 contract negotiations and prior to the last provincial election.

We won’t stop until violence is no longer part of the job.

Nurses will be in Victoria this October to deliver some 25,000 signed postcards from people across the province personally calling on Health Minister Adrian Dix to ensure nurses’ health and safety gets gets the priority it deserves.

Our bargaining committee has now begun preliminary discussions with the Health Employers Association of BC that are intended to set a uniquely collaborative tone ahead of formal contract talks.

I and other members of our provincial executive will also be visiting every BCNU region through the fall to provide members with a bargaining outlook for the year ahead. Talk to your regional chair or visit the BCNU member portal to find out more about the meeting in your region.

Ensuring the public understands the challenging working conditions BC nurses face is vital for our success. This fall also sees the release of the latest television ad in our it’s #thatbad campaign. It’s a stark portrayal of the daily stress and heavy caseloads community nurses endure, and it encourages all British Columbians to contact their MLA and support nurses’ call for safe patient care.

You can view the ad by visiting our social media platforms or keeping an eye out while watching the evening news.

This year has reminded me just how resilient nurses can be. You’ve risen to the challenge of leadership and I’m honoured to do this work with you, for our patients, our co-workers and our communities. •

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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CHECK IN

NEWS FROM AROUND THE PROVINCE

NURSES STAND WITH CASINO WORKERS

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HEN some 700 workers at Gateway Casinos in the Okanagan walked off the job this summer to demand living wages that would bring them in-line with the industry standard in BC, nurses were there to offer support.

BCNU President Christine Sorensen and BCNU Thompson North Okanagan chair Tracey Quewezance brought water and snacks to the Kamloops picket line on July 4 and offered words of solidarity on behalf of BCNU members.

The BC Government Employees’ Union (BCGEU) represents the striking staff spread across Gateway’s four

casinos in the Okanagan.

Gateway’s Okanagan staff have been trying to negotiate a new collective agreement since the last one expired in September 2017. Negotiations broke off in May after the employer refused to offer wages and benefits that are industry standard at comparable casinos. •

BCNU WELCOMES STUDENTS

SOLIDARITY Nurses in the Thompson North Okanagan region have been supporting striking casino workers in their communities. Top right: BCNU President Christine Sorensen with Leona, a 20-year Gateway Casino employee who earns just over the minimum wage. Bottom right: BCNU Thompson North Okanagan chair Tracey Quewezance with TRU fourth-year nursing student Corey, who also works at Cascades Casino.

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OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

BCNU welcomed two amazing summer students to our Burnaby office this year. Arman Gill and Ava Moezinia joined the union’s professional practice and advocacy department and worked closely with the Human Rights and Equity Committee to put together BCNU’s 2019 pocket calendar, plan the union’s 2018 practice conference, and map out the BC licensure requirements for internationally educated nurses, among other projects.

Arman hails from Abbotsford and is now in his third year of a Bachelor of Science in nursing program at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. Ava moved to Canada in 2005. She is now a third-year nursing student at BCIT, and is starting level four of her program this fall. Best of luck to you both!

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

NURSES AT THE FAIR BCNU SEES BETTER FINANCES

CARNIVAL ATMOSPHERE Just a few of the many members who volunteered at the BCNU booth during this year’s Pacifc National Exhibiton.

From left: BCNU North West region chair Teri Forster, Heidi Labrador, Dennis Belmas, Darlene Jager and Janice Stevens.

NEW FINANCE SYSTEMS WILL BE AUTOMATED, SIMPLER AND FASTER BCNU is modernizing and improving our financial systems over the next year. Our “Better Finance System” will change how we handle expense payments to members and staff, as well as how we order from outside vendors and pay them for their products and services.

Using a new technology tool called NetSuite, we will be able to automate and link payment systems for simpler and faster processing, and go green by reducing the use of paper-based systems.

Stay tuned for more information about how NetSuite, our Better Finance System, will improve services to members and streamline the process of filing expenses when members attend BCNU events.

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CNU WRAPPED UP ANOTHER AMAZING COMMUNITY OUTREACH effort at this year’s Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. The union’s big blue bus was on hand from Aug. 22 to 24, and members engaged with the thousands of people over the three-day event. Some 70 members from 10 BCNU regions volunteered at this year’s PNE, including student and retired members.

“It was great to see our members connecting with the public,” says BCNU Shaughnessy Heights region lobby coordinator Bal Borchert. “They were able to conduct blood pressure and blood glucose checks, and talk to people about the importance of safe health-care workplaces.” •

CASTING CALL

BCNU IN THE COMMUNITY

Would you like to become the face of BCNU? Up to 20 delegates from the Human Rights and Equity Conference will be chosen to participate in a professional photo shoot on December 1. The photos will be used for BCNU advertisements and promotional materials. One day book-off and overnight hotel accommodation, if required, for out-of-town delegates will be provided. Interested?

E-mail lmacdonald@bcnu.org

THIS SUMMER SAW BCNU members participating in community events across the province. From Nelson’s Silver City Days to Vancouver’s Philippine Days Festival, nurses and other BCNU members were there representing their union and their professions. BCNU’s big blue bus was on hand at many of the events this summer, and was well-received wherever it went.

PROUD NURSES RIVA region lobby coordinator Reynaldo Ortiz (left) and Coastal Mountain region lobby coordinator Yolanda Cutanda-Dela Cruz (right) were joined by Coastal Mountain region’s Shirley Oandasan and other members at this years Philippine Days Festival.

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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CHECK IN NEWS FROM AROUND THE PROVINCE

IT’S #THATBAD

GOVERNANCE RENEWAL

LET’S TEST

THE RECIPE!

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HE UNION’S governance renewal process is now entering its next phase and we’re inviting members to provide feedback on preliminary draft revisions to our constitution and bylaws.

The Constitution and Bylaws Renewal Working Group (CBRWG) has been engaged in member-wide consultations over the last year about modernizing the rules that govern our organization while ensuring that any changes are consistent with BCNU’s culture and values.

The CBRWG has drafted changes to BCNU’s constitution, bylaws and policies that are based on this consultation. Now it’s time to “test the recipe” to ensure these draft revisions accurately reflects

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members’ input to date.

You can provide feedback via an online form on the BCNU member portal.

There you will find the draft revisions and the governance renewal summary document.

The CBRWG is collecting member input during three, three-week cycles: Sept 13 – Oct 3; Oct 11 – 31; and Nov 8 – Dec 3.

There will be a prize draw at the end of each cycle for those members who have shared their information on the online form. There will also be a final grand prize in December.

Dig in! • Questions?

Contact Lorned Burkart: lorneburkart@bcnu.org or 250-354-5311

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

Provincial ad campaign puts spotlight on community nurses

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RITISH Columbians will soon get a glimpse of the conditions nurses face from the perspective of a home health nurse working in a rural community.

This fall BCNU is running our third and final TV ad for our #ThatBad campaign. The commercial depicts the impact that workload, insufficient staffing and unpredictable patient needs have on nurses who work in the community.

The ad aims to show the public that these issues hamper nurses’ ability to provide safe patient care.

It also calls on viewers to contact their MLA to ask what’s being done to fix

the problem.

“So many factors affect quality of health care yet it always comes down to people,” says BCNU President Christine Sorensen. “When workloads are excessive and staffing levels aren’t sufficient, patient care suffers.”

Sorensen encourages all BCNU members to get involved in the campaign.

“When nurses speak, people listen,” she says.

Follow and use the hashtag #thatbad, join the conversation online and participate in BCNU’s campaign for better protections and systemic change. • For more information, visit bcnu.org/supportnurses

FLU SEASON

‘INSUFFICIENT, INADEQUATE AND COMPLETELY UNPERSUASIVE’ Latest ruling supports ditching BC’s punitive ‘vaccinate-or-mask’ policy

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HE ANNUAL FLU SEASON will soon be upon us. And health authorities will again be reminding employees of their obligation to receive a flu shot in accordance with workplace influenza control policies.

Since 2012, health-care workers who choose not to receive the vaccine have been required to wear surgical masks. Failure to do so can result in disciplinary action and even termination.

But a September arbitration decision in Ontario has given BC nurses renewed support for their call on health employers to end punitive seasonal flu policies.

The BC Nurses’ Union has consistently argued that there simply isn’t any strong evidence to support the use of surgical masks as a tool for preventing or protecting against transmission from asymptomatic unvaccinated health-care workers. The Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) made similar arguments before an Ontario arbitrator who recently struck down a similar, and controversial, vaccinate-or-mask policy in place at nine Toronto-area hospitals.

Arbitrator William Kaplan concluded the hospitals couldn’t provide scientific evidence to back up the practice.

The arguments that witnesses for the hospitals presented were “insufficient, inadequate and completely unpersuasive,” Kaplan wrote in a Sept. 6 decision focused on a grievance filed by ONA. Kaplan found that hospitals failed to prove that nurses who didn’t have flu symptoms were a significant source of infection and therefore would be required to wear masks if they weren’t inoculated.

He noted that the employer’s own director of infection prevention and control testified that “the likelihood of transmission is dramatically higher when you’re coughing or sneezing.”

Kaplan also heard an expert, Lisa Brosseau, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, testify that surgical masks fit poorly and aren’t an effective form of protection.

The arbitrator said it was illogical to force nurses who aren’t immunized to be masked when hospitals aren’t strict with unvaccinated visitors.

It was the second time in three years that an arbitrator ruled against mask requirements for unvaccinated employees in Ontario hospitals. A 2015 decision against the Sault Area Hospital found the requirement was in fact an undeclared way to force more nurses to submit to flu shots.

Following that earlier decision, several hospitals in Toronto continued to have mask policies. ONA argued the requirement singled out unvaccinated nurses and made patients think they were infectious.

BCNU President Christine Sorensen says this latest decision bolsters nurses’ call for the withdrawal of similar polices currently in place in BC. She says the mask requirement highlights the coercive and punitive dimensions of the flu control policy.

Members who chose not to be vaccinated reported a loss of privacy and increased scrutiny and judgment.

“BCNU has always opposed mandatory flu vaccinations. We will continue to support our members’ right to make personal and professional decisions about whether the flu vaccine is right for them.”

To achieve that goal, BCNU filed an industry-wide grievance in 2016 that has since been referred to arbitration. In the interim, it’s very important for members to know that failure to comply may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination. • With files from The Globe and Mail.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BC’s INFLUENZA CONTROL POLICY • You must advise your employer whether or not you have been vaccinated. Self-reporting your influenza vaccine status is through a web-based form; your health authority will advise you how to access the form, which is “secure and confidential.”

• If you choose not to be vaccinated, ensure that you follow your employer’s flu policy.

• If you cannot wear a mask or receive a vaccination for medical reasons, seek an accommodation.

If your request is denied, file a grievance.

• If wearing a mask interferes with your ability to do your job, ask for an exception to the policy. If your request is denied, file a grievance.

• If you have an adverse reaction from a flu vaccine or from wearing a mask, complete an incident report and make a claim with WorkSafeBC. • Take other precautions to prevent influenza, including washing your hands and staying home if you are sick.

• Inform your steward if your employer is not enforcing the flu policy consistently.

For example, not requiring all unvaccinated staff and visitors to wear a mask.

• Conduct point-of-care risk assessments prior to patient interaction to identify the potential for violence created by wearing a mask. Stop if a task is unsafe and speak with your manager or supervisor. If unresolved, use your right to refuse unsafe work.

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BCNU PRIDE! BC NURSES’ UNION MEMBERS SHOWED THEIR LESBIAN, GAY, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, two-spirited, intersex, asexual (LGBTQ2IA) pride this summer by participating in eight Pride parades and festivals in communities across the province.

BCNU LGBTQ caucus council liaison Tracy Quewezance says that BCNU members have really enjoyed participating. “Pride events are a fabulous opportunity to recognize and celebrate sexual and gender diversity and promote equity and justice for all our members who identify as LGBTQ.” Celebrating Pride demonstrates BCNU’s ongoing commitment to human rights advocacy. Union members are encouraged to promote inclusion and safe, publicly funded health care by joining their co-workers at Pride events.

Watch for 2019 dates and locations on BCNU’s website event calendar.

THE PEOPLE

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1. Thompson North Okanagan region chair Tracy Quewezance (middle) is joined by members Bev Moody and Crystal Brand at the Aug. 27 Kamloops Pride celebration. 2. Simon Fraser region lobby coordinator Maria Huertas, co-chair Wendy Gibbs, mental health advocate Suellen Larsen, treasurer Cam Ward, professional responsibility advocate Roy Hansen, and OH&S representative Jereme Bennett gather at the New Westminster Aug. 18 Pride celebration. 3. Vancouver Pride parade saw a strong turnout from BCNU on Aug. 5. 4. Thompson North Okanagan region chair Tracy Quewezance (left) is joined by former BCNU president Cathy Ferguson. 5. North East region treasurer Hanna Embree (right) marches in

the June 2 Fort St. John Pride walk.

6. South Islands region members join in on the fun for Victoria’s July 8 Pride parade celebration. 7. North West region member Emma Millson Taylor shows off her BCNU pride flag.

8. Pacific Rim region treasurer Richard Bernier waves the BCNU flag during Nanaimo’s June 9 Pride celebration.

9. West Kootenay region members participated in Trail’s Aug. 31 Pride parade celebration. Left to right: Nicole Cameron, educator Colleen Driscoll (with Robin Driscoll), mental health advocate Karen Wasilenkoff, member Scott Lamont and son Rory, lobby choordinator Angela Lamoureux, Gerry Shannon, regional chair Ron Poland and communication secretary Angela Falk.

OPIOID CRISIS

OTTAWA MUST ACT NOW Citing the limits of harm reduction, nurses say decriminalization is the only long-term approach that will save lives

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HE UNENDING SUPPLY of toxic opioids that’s killing over 100 British Columbians a month has prompted BCNU to demand the federal government take stronger action to tackle the overdose crisis that continues to take a devastating toll on communities in BC and across the country.

Pointing to drug overdose death rates that remain historically high, in July BC Nurses’ Union President Christine Sorensen called on the federal government to declare a national public health emergency, decriminalize personal possession of all opioids and provide access to a safe opioid supply.

Sorensen acknowledged the federal government’s ongoing efforts in response to the crisis, such as the easing of rules to allow the expansion of supervised injection sites and making naloxone available without a prescription, but she says harm reduction has its limits, and more needs to be done.

“BC has some of the most progressive harm reduction programs and policies and has been a leader in promoting supervised injection sites,” she says.

“Yet the province continues to face one of the worst overdose crises in the country – almost 2,000 British Columbians died of preventable opioid overdoses in 2016 and 2017. And in March of this year, we saw overdoses spike to 160, the second highest toll in the province’s history.”

Sorensen says that while harm reduction is a comprehensive approach to substance use, these policies and practices need to be broadened to

PROMOTING RECOVERY BCNU members were in New Westminster on Sept. 8 to celebrate Recovery Day 2018. Part music festival, part carnival, part educational event, Recovery Day celebrates survivors, remembers those lost, and works to raise awareness for recovery while reducing the stigma of substance use. From left: BCNU Simon Fraser Region OH&S rep Jereme Bennett, BCNU Shaughnessy Heights region lobby coordinator Bal Borchert, Shaughnessy Heights mental health rep Gurvir Sekhon and Simon Fraser region PRP advocate Roy Hansen.

address the toxicity of the drug supply and reframe the way drug use is approached. “About 90 percent of those who died last year were alone inside a home when they suffered an overdose. Supervised injection sites alone don’t help these people.”

She argues that the current war on drugs has been costly and grossly ineffective and has resulted in widespread stigma toward addiction and against substance users. “We need to stop treating the most vulnerable members of our

“About 90 percent of those who died last year were alone inside a home when they suffered an overdose.”

BCNU President Christine Sorensen

society like criminals. We’ve learned from countries like Portugal that when you decriminalize, people feel safe enough to ask for treatment.”

Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, in 2001 and began a major public health campaign to tackle addiction. The crisis in the country soon stabilized and in the ensuing years it saw dramatic drops in

problematic drug use, infection rates, overdose deaths and drug-related crime. Portugal’s mortality rate is now four times lower than the European average.

Sorensen argues that by declaring the current crisis a national public health emergency under the Emergencies Act, Ottawa can begin to effectively address the issue and provide more resources to reduce preventable deaths.

“There is a growing concern among nurses across BC that more needs to be done,” she says. “The preventable death of Comox’s Ryan Hedican is just one example of the devastating toll the crisis is taking on families and communities.”

Thousands of Canadians signed a petition to the House of Commons that was drafted in the wake of Hedican’s death and with the help of community nurses. The petition will support a private member’s bill from Comox MP Gord Johns.

The proposed legislation would decriminalize personal possession and ensure access to safe, unadulterated substances to prevent poisoning from contaminated sources.

“We need to ensure there is a clean drug supply for people who are struggling with addiction – and decriminalization and access to treatment is a big part of that,” says Sorensen. •

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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HEALTH & SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE

COCHLEAR IMPLANT LEADS TO NEW NURSING CAREER Enhanced Disability Management Program a model of collaboration and creativity

PHOTO: INTERIOR HEALTH

TEAM EFFORT Kelowna General Hospital’s Jordona Hubber is grateful for the support she received through the Enhanced Disability Management Program that got her back to work after she experienced debilitating hearing loss. From left: Hubber, Human Resource Business Partner Cory Burnett, Disability Management Program Leader Brendan Hamilton and Ambulatory Care Manager Denise Dunton.

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HE MYSTERIOUS NOISE in Jordona Hubber’s right ear started as a quiet buzz. It began in 2009 and became progressively louder as it also moved into her other ear. After five years of buzzing sounds the noise grew into a constant high-pitched scream until she completely lost the ability to recognize normal sounds and suffered hearing loss in both ears.

“It’s hard to explain the false sounds that my ears produce,” says Hubber.

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OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

“It’s like a high-pitched human scream combined with the sound of data going over a dial-up line. That’s the signal my ears send to my brain all day long.”

Hubber was working on a medical/surgical unit at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) when her hearing started to falter. And as her condition worsened she couldn’t perform the safety-sensitive parts of nursing work.

“The biggest challenge I had was hearing clearly over the phone,” says Hubber. “I was pretty good at lip read-

ing, but when I couldn’t physically see other clinicians talking to me it was hard to understand them and practice safely.”

In 2016 Hubber withdrew from nursing practice because her hearing aids were no longer effective. And without surgery nothing could be done to improve her hearing. Doctors said she would need a cochlear implant if she were to have any hope of returning to work.

Cochlear implants are surgically implanted devices that bypass the normal hearing process. They create electric signals that directly stimulate the auditory nerve. With training, the brain interprets those signals as sound and speech.

Hubber was grateful for the medical solution that promised to allow her to practise again, but confesses that she was skeptical about the chances for success.

“Leaving nursing was one of the hardest things I ever did,” she says. “I love my career and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to continue nursing after my cochlear surgery.”

But Hubber would soon learn that an even bigger hurdle she would have to overcome was the wait-time for the procedure.

“My medical team told me there would be a two-year wait for surgery,” she says. “But our long-term disability program would run out before my post-operative rehabilitation was finished.”

Hubber was determined to do something about the lengthy delay. After discussions with her care team she contacted the media and in 2016 The Vancouver Sun and CTV News published stories about her experience, the systemic challenges she faced and the

impact waiting for surgery would have on her family.

Fortunately, the province increased funding for cochlear implants shortly after those stories appeared, and Hubber underwent surgery 10 months later.

Her surgery went well and Hubber’s team at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver taught her how to use the cochlear implant to hear again. After six months of rehabilitation Hubber felt ready to return to nursing – and the Enhanced Disability Management Program (EDMP) was there to help.

First negotiated by the Nurses’ Bargaining Association and provincial health employers in 2010, today EDMP is a widely available customized disability management program that any union member with an occupational or non-occupational illness or injury can access.

Based on best practices, EDMP enhances the support provided to nurses struggling with illness or injury by addressing barriers to resuming work. It sets out regular reviews and monitoring of individuals and is intended to provide a more seamless process for returning to work.

BCNU EDMP representatives help program participants access rehabilitation services and work with disability managers through the Duty to Accommodate (DTA) process to facilitate their return to work.

Hubber’s biggest concern was the fact that she still couldn’t hear as well over the phone as she could in person, and she worried this would be a barrier to nursing. That’s when her former colleague Melanie McMahon started advocating for her. McMahon was following Hubber’s health journey on Facebook, and when she read that Hubber wanted to return to work she moved into action right away.

“It took a great manager, supportive colleagues and a creative disability team to make this work.”

Jordona Hubber

“I worked with Jordona at KGH and I know she’s a fantastic nurse,” says McMahon. “Several years ago I moved to the colon screening program and I thought this would be a good unit for Jordona with her corrected hearing. So I asked my manager to keep her in mind when we had our next vacancy.”

Interior Health manager Denise Dunton manages five units at KGH and tries to accommodate nurses with disabilities whenever she can.

“I like to be proactive and help nurses return to work,” she says. “That means letting disability management know in advance when I’m expecting a vacancy.

Senior nurses have lots of training, experience and knowledge and I want them working in my units whenever it’s possible.”

Dunton knew there would be challenges to work through. But she also knew that hearing technologies were advancing quickly and she was determined to try and make Hubber’s placement work.

So Dunton, EDMP representative Janet Barrett and IH’s disability management office quickly engaged audiology specialists at St Paul’s Hospital.

They recommended a new Bluetooth technology that pipes sound directly from the phone into Hubber’s cochlear implants. It worked perfectly.

Hubber now clearly understands phone conversations and says she only has challenges with clients who have strong accents. Dunton has accommodated this issue by ensuring that clerical

staff screened clients and assign those with strong accents to other nurses.

Hubber has used the Bluetooth technology for over a year and it has corrected her hearing to the point that she can hear as well as someone who’s not disabled. And the more she works with it the better it gets.

“I feel so grateful that I can support my family and I’m back at work doing what I love,” says Hubber. “It took a great manager, supportive colleagues and a creative disability team to make this work.”

“Jordona’s accommodation shows us how the Enhanced Disability Management Program is successful when everyone pulls together,” says IH Workplace Health and Safety Corporate Director John Bevanda. “Our disability management team helps ill and injured employees stabilize their health and return to work. Jordona’s story is a testament to how creative thinking can rebuild careers and improve employees’ quality of life.”

BCNU executive councillor for health and safety Rhonda Croft says Hubber’s success story is exactly the kind of news that nurses like to hear. “Helping ill or injured nurses return to work can sometimes be a challenge and the creative teamwork with Jordona’s accommodation is a model for others to follow across the province.” • For more information and to find the name of your EDMP representative please visit the BCNU website: www.bcnu.org

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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USED BY NURSE SOPHIA LAKE TO CHECK HEART RATE.

OH&S

SPIKE IN VIOLENCE PROMPTS NEEDED ACTION New safety measures at Forensic Psychiatric Hospital should have come much sooner

USED ON NURSE SOPHIA LAKE TO STRANGLE HER.

NUMBERS THAT MATTER Violence in the health-care workplace

68% of BC nurses have experienced verbal abuse on the job where they felt concerned about their physical safety. 57% have personally experienced physical violence in their worksite. 48% have experienced both.

49% of nurses believe the security in hospitals is not adequate.

39% of nurses feel the risk of violence is at least somewhat of a deterrent to staying in their current job.

Strategies to reduce violence in the workplace 24/7 trained security at certain sites:

95% of nurses agree.

Tougher sentences if anyone criminally assaults nurses:

86% of nurses support.

BC nurses’ access to information identifying a person with history of violence:

95% of nurses agree.

Provincial system to keep track of violent patients:

70% of nurses agree.

Source: Violence Against Nurses Campaign Baseline Research. Mustel Group, 2017

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SPATE OF ASSAULTS at Coquitlam’s Forensic Psychiatric Hospital (FPH) over the summer had nurses who work at the major provincial facility once again ringing the alarm about inadequate health and safety conditions.

The seriousness of the attacks prompted the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) to announce it would be increasing staffing levels and expanding security and training at the 190-bed facility, where people who have committed serious crimes, but are deemed unfit to stand trial due to mental illness, are sent for treatment.

The most recent assaults happened on Sept. 11, when four hospital staff — including two nurses — were injured in a violent attack by a patient. This followed an attack on Aug. 13 in the maximum-security unit, where a nurse needed to be treated for severe facial injuries. On Aug. 5, another nurse working at FPH was sucker-punched and suffered head injuries.

PHSA’s Sept. 19 announcement came after leaders from the BC Nurses’ Union and other unions representing FPH health-care workers met with health authority managers to develop a plan that would mitigate the ongoing danger to workers’ health and safety.

The announced improvements include larger security teams, new specialized clinical-security liaison positions, more staff training, increased supervision by nurse leaders and additional frontline staff.

Speaking to the CBC on the day of the announcement, BCNU President Christine Sorensen said she was cautiously optimistic about the changes, but stressed that the employer should already have implemented many of the safety measures.

“At the very minimum, nurses working at Forensics are exposed to verbal abuse every shift. There’s been physical assaults to the point where nurses have had concussions and serious scrapes with blood exposure,” she reported. “Nurses have been raising safety concerns at Forensics for many years.”

According to WorkSafeBC, the hospital’s injury rate is 75 percent higher than other acute-care hospitals in BC, with seven percent of staff reporting injuries versus 4.1 percent in other facilities.

Systemic neglect of safety at FPH first came to light after a serious stabbing incident in September 2012, where a patient with a known history of violence was alone with a therapist and allowed access to a large unsecured knife. A subsequent WorkSafeBC investigation revealed just how lacking the culture of safety was at FPH. Sorensen notes that in 2016 PHSA and other provincial health employers committed to establishing a culture of safety that would make the delivery of care safer and healthier for nurses and patients.

Employers also agreed to the creation of a new violence prevention framework

by September of that year as part of NBA contract negotiations.

FPH was identified as one of four highrisk worksites in the province that would receive targeted funding for enhanced violence prevention training, procedures and security.

The most recent changes will build on the safety measures already in place, but this summer’s incidents make it clear that PHSA still needs to live up to many of the commitments it made to safeguard workers’ health and safety.

“I look forward to ongoing collaboration on future initiatives by PHSA to enhance the delivery of safe patient care,” says Sorensen. •

PROVIDING NURSES’ INPUT BCNU President Christine Sorensen (r) attends an Aug. 15 Community Dialogue Session on pharmacare in Vancouver, led by Dr. Erick Hoskins (l), chair of the Implementation Committee on a National Pharmacare Plan.

CANADIANS NEED DRUGS PHARMACARE IS THE DISPENSARY BCNU signs on to consensus principles for a national public drug plan

I

T WASN’T THAT LONG AGO when getting access to medicinal cannabis was a clandestine exercise that saw users facing arrests and criminal records. Canadians’ push for the decriminalization of the drug goes back many years, but the legal and statutory changes that now protect patients’ rights to use it only occurred over the last decade.

Canadians have also been pushing for access to other drugs, namely, prescription pharmaceuticals that are covered under a national insurance plan. But on this front there is still much work to be done.

Canada is the only country in the world with a national public healthcare system that does not include pharmacare. Our country’s complex, patchwork system of prescription drug funding, with widely varying levels of public and private insurance coverage,

“Pharmacare is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but a must-have.”

BCNU President Christine Sorensen

means there is uneven access to prescription drugs.

Today, one in 10 Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions, and many people have to choose between paying their rent and getting the medications they need.

It shouldn’t be this way. For years public health-care advocates have been calling on Ottawa to expand the medicare umbrella to include prescription drugs. And Canadians overwhelmingly agree: a 2015 Angus Reid poll found that 91 percent of Canadians believe our public health-care system should

include a universal prescription drug plan.

Not surprisingly, the issue of access to needed drugs was major issue in the 2015 federal election, and last year the Trudeau government opened a “national dialogue” on pharmacare through online public consultations and meetings with stakeholders across the country. Led by the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare that was announced in Budget 2018, the consultation focused on how to implement “affordable national pharmacare for Canadians and their families, employers and governments.” (Emphasis added) Concerned about the advisory council’s mandate of “affordability” and what it might mean for the policy recommendations that come out of the process, public health-care advocates recently developed a statement of pharmacare consensus principles that spells out exactly what “pharmacare” means.

The BC Nurses’ Union is now one of the latest signatories to the statement that was issued by a diverse coalition of unions and health-care advocates on Sept. 25. It’s a call for a national pharmacare program that, like medicare, is publicly administered, comprehensive, accessible, portable and universal.

“Historically, pharmacare was always intended to be integrated with medicare,” says BC Nurses’ Union President Christine Sorensen. “But the black eye in the Canadian health-care system is that too many people continue to pay staggering amounts of money for prescription medication.”

Half of all adult Canadians take one prescribed medication on a daily basis, she notes. And those over 65 years of age take up to five prescribed drugs per day. On average, individual

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THE CASE FOR UNIVERSAL DRUG COVERAGE

8.4 MILLION

Estimated number of working Canadians who have no prescription drug coverage

30%

Amount that Canadians currently pay above the OECD average for lack of a national drug program to negotiate lower drug prices.

3.5 MILLION

Number of Canadians who cannot afford to fill their prescriptions

AVERAGE COST OF THE CHOLESTEROL DRUG LIPITOR PER YEAR:

$811

IN CANADA (which DOES NOT HAVE universal drug coverage)

$15

IN NEW ZEALAND (which HAS universal drug coverage)

91%

Proportion of Canadians who believe our public health care system should include a universal prescription drug plan* * SOURCE: ANGUS REID SURVEY, 2015.

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Canadians spend just under $1,000 on prescription medication per annum.

Canada also has the second-highest prescription drug costs in the world after the United States. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, prescription drug expenses have skyrocketed over the last 30 years, from $2.6 billion in 1985 to $33.8 billion in 2017.

“This is unsustainable, and we can only assume it will get worse,” remarks Sorensen. She says Canadians need only look south of the border for the evidence. The 2016 EpiPen controversy saw Mylan Pharmaceuticals increase the price of the life-saving injection by 400 percent between 2009 and 2016.

A public uproar and government intervention led drug makers to manufacture a cheaper generic version. “The US experience shows that pharmacare is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but a must-have for Canada,” says Sorensen.

Nurses, along with physicians and other health professionals, have firsthand knowledge of the human cost of not having universal prescription drug coverage. Every day, they see the harm that comes from patients not being able to afford the medications they need.

The “medication poverty” that results in pill-cutting and skipped doses is also a growing concern for health-care providers. “Missing medication puts patients’ health at risk and puts more burden on families, employers and the health-care system,” says Sorensen, who notes that someone who is unable to afford an asthma inhaler costing approximately $70 for three months’ treatment could end up in hospital at a cost of about $1,000 a day.

A 2017 report from the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that a single-payer pharmacare system would save Canadians $4.2 billion per year.

But some of the money individuals would save from no longer having to pay extended health-care insurance premiums or out-of-pocket costs to drug companies would instead be paid

into a national drug plan via progressive taxation.

Implementing pharmacare also means having a government in Ottawa willing to add $20 billion to its annual budget to fund the plan – not an easy order.

The losers in any move to national pharmacare would be the insurance companies currently providing drug coverage through individual and employer health plans, and drug manufactures whose profit margins would suffer as a result of the bulk buying of drugs that governments would leverage in order to save money.

Both groups represent powerful corporate interests ready to fight to maintain the current inefficient and expensive system.

“It’s a paradox. While medications have become more effective, we are less able to ensure everyone who needs them has access,” says Dr. Steve Morgan, professor of health policy at the University of British Columbia.

But the situation will only worsen without a national, universal prescription drug plan, Dr. Morgan predicts.

“Because of the extraordinary and uncontrolled costs of medicines in Canada — we have some of the highest costs in the world — businesses are saying they can no longer afford to provide the kinds of benefits they have in the past.”

A government-run, single-payer system is the answer, he says, because only government can bring to bear the expertise and the buying power needed to keep prescription drug costs at a reasonable level.

Sorensen agrees. “As a mother and a nurse, I am afraid of how costly it will be to future generations of Canadians if we continue to ration access to prescribed medication.

“The federal government has an opportunity to be pioneers of pharmacare just as Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare was in his day – it’s an opportunity whose time has come.” •

PHARMACARE OUR VISION BCNU supports the implementation of an effective national pharmacare program based on the following PRINCIPLES: 1.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION National pharmacare must seamlessly incorporate prescription drug coverage into the greater public health-care system.

The system must be governed by a public authority on a non-profit basis to ensure accountability exclusively to the public interest and democratic institutions.

2.

UNIVERSALITY To prevent people from falling through the cracks, everyone in Canada should be covered by the same plan on equal terms and without financial barriers. This will ensure universal coverage based on need and not ability to pay. It will nearly eliminate cost-related nonadherence to prescriptions, which contributes to the deaths of thousands of Canadians per year.

3.

SINGLE-PAYER Only a single-payer system can effectively leverage bulk buying to bargain down prices for covered prescription medications and save between $4 and $11 billion per year. These savings could be reinvested in needed health-care services such as seniors care, home care, mental health and Indigenous health. A single-payer system will also achieve billions in administrative efficiencies, much like our single-payer public health care system.

4.

NATIONAL FORMULARY A common, comprehensive national formulary must be established based on evidence and administered by an arm’s-length, depoliticized public agency. The agency’s primary objective will be to maximize health benefits per dollars spent, using value-formoney and clinical assessments.

These four principles can only be secured in federal legislation and matched with appropriate federal transfers to the provinces and territories.

JUSTICE DELAYED Medicare trial underway again

T

HE PATIENTS, NURSES and other health-care workers who have a stake in the ongoing Charter trial that threatens our public health-care system expressed their frustration when the legal proceedings resumed this past spring.

Last year BC Supreme Court Justice John Steeves granted an extended adjournment to the forprofit Cambie Surgeries Corporation (CSC), the primary plaintiff, so it could properly prepare for the case.

It soon became apparent after the trial began in September 2016 that CSC hadn’t gathered the appropriate evidence to support its claims. That caused the court proceedings to drag on before CSC CEO Dr. Brian Day sought relief from having to pay daily court hearing fees and claimed to have exhausted his litigation funds.

The irony of the situation has not been lost on those who suffered financially at the hands of for-profit providers. The delays caused by CSC’s shambolic legal efforts have only served to lengthen a trial that it claims is about allowing for-profit health-care providers to reduce treatment delays in the public system.

“Nurses are frustrated by the procedural issues that dogged the trial since it began. We have patient-intervenors who have been waiting years to present important affidavit evidence attesting to the

high cost and negative impacts of forprofit care,” says BC Nurses’ Union President Christine Sorensen. “The trial delays were granted to allow the plaintiffs time to properly prepare their case – we expect to finally see some progress now that the trial has resumed.”

Sorensen says BCNU’s legal advocacy in this case reflects the nursing profession’s commitment to universal health care and support for the principles of medicare. “As healthcare professionals, we’ve been gravely concerned about private medical clinics’ unlawful billing practices – it’s a direct threat to medicare and the health and well-being of Canadians.

These clinics claim to act on behalf of patients, but their real motive is profit.”

LAWS TO BE ENFORCED Tortuous legal proceedings haven’t prevented the NDP government from using legislative measures previous governments chose to avoid.

Five days before the trial resumed in April, the government announced it would be bringing into force additional enforcement provisions that had been enacted 15 years ago but never proclaimed in force. Bill 92 – the Medicare Protection Amendment Act – had been enacted in 2003 to protect patients from being charged unlawful fees when accessing necessary health care.

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MORE NURSES NEEDED TO REDUCE SURGICAL WAIT TIMES AS THE CAMBIE SURGERIES TRIAL DRAGS on, the new provincial government has wasted no time introducing measures to improve health care in BC. Barely a week goes by without seeing Health Minister Adrian Dix visiting a provincial health-care facility to announce new funding for expanded services.

The move shows that when there is political will the system can be supported and improved.

The BC Surgical and Diagnostic Imaging Strategy is one of the government’s most significant initiatives. Announced earlier this year, the plan aims to provide approximately 9,400 more publicly funded surgeries by the end of March 2019.

If successful, the strategy would take much of the wind out of Dr. Brian Day’s sails by alleviating the public wait times that he claims are motivating his lawsuit against the government.

The $75 million dollar plan will see five hip and knee replacement programs implemented throughout the province to address the long waits for surgeries and help the province catch up with demand, starting with hip and knee replacement surgery and dental surgery.

This is excellent news for all British Columbians, but BCNU President Christine Sorensen says she’s concerned the plan does not take into account the number of specialty-educated nurses required to make the strategy a reality.

"If you're considering a 34 percent increase in surgeries, I'd like to know what’s being done to recruit and properly staff nurses.

“This is certainly a positive step, but it requires significant planning to ensure nurses aren’t stretched too thin.”

Sorensen notes that BC is currently experiencing the worst operating room nurse shortage in the province’s history.

"We’ve been working closely with health authorities to come up with creative solutions to support the system. But without nurses there can be no surgeries.

Without nurses there can be no postoperative care. Without nurses there can be no community-based care for patients when they go home."

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DEFENDING MEDICARE BCNU President Christine Sorensen speaks to the media outside the BC Supreme Court when Cambie Surgery Corp’s legal challenge to public health care laws resumed earlier this year.

JUSTICE DELAYED continued from page 17

applicable to diagnostic services will come into effect April 1, 2019.

The additional enforcement provisions, which come into effect on Oct. 1, are similar to measures in place in other provinces that allow patients who are extra-billed to be refunded by the Medical Services Commission. And any physician who extra-bills may face fines of up to $20,000.

Sorensen welcomed the move.

“Enforcement of regulations prohibiting extra-billing should mean for-profit medical clinics will no longer be able to flout the law,” she said, speaking to media on the steps of the BC Law Courts.

“This, along with the implementation of the province’s surgical and diagnostic imaging strategy (see sidebar), should go a long way to reduce wait times for BC patients.”

CSC lawyers have applied for an injunction to delay the implementation of the newly proclaimed enforcement provisions and prevent full enforcement of BCs medicare laws pending the outcome of the trial before Justice Steeves.

CSC lawyers are also seeking an interim order delaying implementation of the enforcement provisions pending the court’s ultimate decision on whether an injunction should be granted.

BC Supreme Court Justice Janet Winteringham heard extensive submissions from the parties ahead of Oct. 1.

In the meantime the province has given owners of private diagnostic facilities a six-month reprieve, announcing in September that Bill 92 provisions

A HISTORY OF PATIENT ADVOCACY BCNU has consistently advocated for fairness and equity in the provision of health care.

In fact, the enactment of the original 2003 legislation came as a result of nurses’ ongoing legal activism on this issue. BCNU began ringing the bell that year about increasing violations of the Canada Health Act and demanded that the federal health minister investigate.

BCNU demanded and received reimbursement from the province for a member who was billed $3,000 by a Lower Mainland private clinic for medically-necessary knee surgery.

Nurses then threatened legal action against the BC and federal governments over evidence of private clinics’ unchecked extra-billing.

When Bill 92 was enacted BCNU praised the province for recognizing its legal responsibilities. And to ensure that the law against extra-billing was enforced, the union set up a hotline for patients to report when they had been billed illegally for medically necessary services.

When extra-billing continued after the province refused to implement the enhanced enforcement provisions, many of these patients’ experiences became the basis for evidence used to pressure the government into action, and begin auditing for-profit medical businesses like Dr. Day’s. •

PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE The truth behind the for-profit legal attack on medicare DR. BRIAN DAY FREQUENTLY remarks that his constitutional challenge is simply about allowing Canadians on surgical wait lists to pay for their own health care it they wish to do so. This argument conveniently ignores the fact that most families could not easily afford to pay the thousands it would cost for many surgical procedures – even if they were allowed to do so.

But Dr. Day knows this. When he and

MYTH PRIVATE INSURANCE IS A

“NEW” MODEL FOR HEALTH CARE

There is nothing new about it.

Canada experimented with private health insurance before medicare and it got a dismal failing grade.

Significant numbers of Canadians couldn’t afford coverage and it was costly for those who could. Little wonder, then, that public demand and support for a national public health-care plan was as high as 80 percent as far back as the 1940s. There were four unsuccessful legislative attempts between 1935 and 1953 to introduce a public system, but the private insurers, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chambers of Commerce, and other right-wing interest groups wielded enough political influence to block them.

However, on April 10, 1957, the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act finally passed unanimously in the House of Commons.

This was followed by the introduction of the first public health-care program in Saskatchewan in 1962, and its expansion to a national system — the Medical Care Insurance Act — six years later.

his allies say “pay,” what they really want is access to more patients who are insured under a U.S.-style private health insurance model.

The general manager of Day’s forprofit Specialist Referral Clinic was quoted as saying: “There are very few people who can afford to pay out-ofpocket for a $40,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 procedure. But when you have insurance that would cover it, that’s a whole different story.”

The current prohibition on extra-billing is the essential mechanism that protects medicare - our single-payer public insurance system – from the private insurance market. But if Day’s

legal challenge succeeds it will benefit the private insurance companies like those that have a stranglehold on the US health-care system. Soon we could all find ourselves paying expensive private insurance premiums for hospital and physician services no longer covered by medicare.

Not surprisingly, private health-care proponents regularly make mythical claims about private insurance in an attempt to undermine public confidence in medicare and convince British Columbians of the “need” for more private insurers and care providers.

Let’s look at some of these claims in detail:

MYTH PRIVATE INSURANCE WILL

MYTH EXPANDING PRIVATE

INCREASE ACCESS AND CHOICE FOR INDIVIDUALS

Private insurance will provide less access to health care for the majority, while only a privileged few will have better access. In countries that have two-tier systems, only a relatively small percentage of the population holds private health insurance (for example, 11.4 percent of UK citizens) and it is mostly the wealthy who do.

Here in Canada, supplementary health insurance for those services not covered by the public system provides a good window into how private insurance would function on an expanded scale. Almost half of Canadians do not have supplementary health coverage today.

MYTH PRIVATE INSURANCE WILL

SAVE THE PUBLIC SYSTEM MONEY It is private for-profit care that is not sustainable. The areas where costs are growing fastest in health care are in fact precisely those with the most private involvement: pharmaceuticals and private health-care premiums.

That is where costs are growing in the double digits — at more than twice the rate of inflation.

INSURANCE IS BASED ON A EUROPEAN MODEL, NOT AN AMERICAN ONE The reality is that Canada is heading toward a US-style health-care system, not a European one. Canada is already tied for third in the world in terms of the share of private health insurance in the funding of our system. Increasing the role of private for-profit health corporations will only move us closer to the American system — one that fails on all counts of access, affordability, and quality of care.

MYTH PUBLIC FUNDING AND

UNIVERSALITY ARE CAUSING LONG WAIT TIMES, SO EXPANDING PRIVATE INSURANCE WILL REDUCE WAITS Allowing private insurers to compete with the public system will increase wait times for treatment, not lower them. We already have fewer nurses than we need — a shortage that contributes to long waits for some services.

Letting the private system draw already limited human resources out of the public system, and letting doctors bill on both sides of the fence, will only make this situation worse.

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FEATURE

hristine Sorensen recalls the winter of 1998 when fear ran through the community she was serving.

People had begun to fall ill, and it was soon discovered that someone who had recently returned from overseas had contracted meningitis.

Public health officials quickly sprang into action to combat the contagious disease. Education and vaccination sessions were booked at the local church and public health leaders wanted “all hands on deck.”

Sorensen was one of the first nurses to volunteer for the weekend clinics. The program manager promised overtime pay to persuade staff to work the extra hours. But when management backtracked on this commitment, she took a principled stand and refused to drop her family responsibilities to work the clinics.

As the situation evolved, Sorensen recalls that the worst part was feeling judged and shamed by the manager for not sacrificing her personal obligations to work the long extra hours. “For me it wasn’t about the lost overtime pay, it was about the broken commitment,” she says. “Health-care leaders expect a lot from nurses and they need to know that we expect a lot from them in return.

“Public health nurses were working a lot of unpaid overtime as we tried to make a difference for far too

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CHANG MAKER BCNU President Christine Sorensen on activism, advocacy and leading the province’s largest health-sector union into the future

GE R PHOTO: PETER HOLST

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FEATURE

many patients,” says Sorensen.

“Unmanageable case-loads were the norm at my worksite and at others across the province.”

Despite the working conditions, Sorensen reckons she was like many public health nurses – not really aware of the union and just trying to do the best she could for her clients. But the meningitis outbreak and subsequent attempts to shame her into working overtime at straight time prompted Sorensen to read her collective agreement closely and learn about her rights and responsibilities.

“In the late 1990s community health nurses were just an addendum at the back of the contract,” she says. “We didn’t feel included in the union and being at the back of the contract felt symbolic. I needed to change that.”

This decision started a chain of events that soon saw Sorensen become increasingly active in her union. She quickly learned that BCNU gave her a platform to advocate for better practice conditions for nurses and better health services for the sick children she served in her public health unit.

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Sorensen’s practice focused on two areas. She was involved with communicable disease control and providing health education, and she was a nursing support services coordinator supporting children with medically complex conditions.

“I loved working in all aspects of public health,” she recalls. “But the most satisfying part of my job was supporting the sick kids and their families who were outside the acute care system.”

That part of Sorensen’s practice increased her desire to advocate for sick children across the province.

“Nurses are always advocating for individual patients, but there were so many patients that I couldn’t advocate for them all.

“I felt that the best way I could raise patient-care issues at a higher level was by getting involved in BCNU and using that platform to influence health policy across the province.”

Sorensen served as a worksite steward before being elected to the provincial bargaining committee in 2009. She was elected chair of BCNU’s Thompson North Okanagan region in 2010, and was then elected vice-president in the 2012 BCNU provincial elections. She was re-elected in 2014 and 2017. Last year she served as acting president after BCNU Council placed

then-sitting president Gayle Duteil on leave. Following Duteil’s departure last May, Sorensen was acclaimed president under the terms of BCNU’s constitution and bylaws.

In her early days as a provincial advocate Sorensen recalls feeling torn between remaining in her practice and taking on full-time advocacy roles. But that would soon change.

“One afternoon I was at the BC Children’s Hospital ICU and the grandfather of one of my patients stopped me in the hallway. He gave me a big hug and said he was sad that I was no longer providing front-line care. But he knew I would make things better for sick kids across the province,” she remembers. “That helped end any doubts I had about being a provincial advocate at BCNU.”

MAKING HEALTH CARE BETTER – ONE ISSUE AT A TIME

“Nurses see how to make things better and we want to fix everything,” says Sorensen. “But achieving lasting change in a complex health system means we need to pick our issues carefully and make improvements one step at a time.”

Sorensen says that one of the things union members need to push back against is the false narrative from profit-driven groups who say public health care is broken and we need to privatize everything.

“I don’t believe that at all,” she says.

“We need to fix our public system and reaffirm our commitment to it by returning services to the community.

And when we do that we take pressure off emergency rooms which are the most expensive places to provide health services.”

Sorensen believes that nurses are natural leaders because the public respects them, and trusts them to do what’s right for patients and the health-care system.

“One of my priorities as president is

encouraging governments and health employers to fully harness nurses’ skills to improve the system,” says Sorensen.

“Employers know that we’re great at assessing patients and developing plans to solve complex health problems.

“But nurses’ abilities don’t stop with the individual patient – we’re also great at assessing care delivery models and developing strategies to improve the whole system.”

Sorensen’s years of work in her region and as union vice-present have prepared her to be a strong advocate for nurses. As the union’s provincial lobby coordinator, she regularly mobilized nurse-activists across the province and planned strategies to engage elected officials – both provincial and federal – to ensure nurses’ concerns informed the decision-making process in Victoria and Ottawa.

“Decision makers need to hear directly from nurses,” says Sorensen.

“When we see opportunities to influence public policy we send nurses directly to MLA’s offices so they understand how to improve practice conditions and health outcomes.”

The union’s provincial violence-prevention campaign is the most recent example of the important work Sorensen is leading on this front. “Fiftyseven provincial MLAs signed BCNU’s pledge to help reduce violence,” she says. “And now we’re continuing to lobby to ensure they act to make workplaces safer and support nurses who are impacted by trauma.”

PROMOTING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION

“In my new role as president, I’m cautiously optimistic that public health care is on the cusp of change,” predicts Sorensen. “My goal is to put BCNU and nurses at the centre of this change by encouraging the government and health employers to manage the system differently.”

Nurses know that health care is often

run with top-down leadership models that aren’t open to innovation from front-line employees.

“It’s a predictable model. Budgets are squeezed, consultants are hired, studies are commissioned, reports are filed and care-delivery models are changed,” she says. “But in all of that I ask ‘where is the front-line engagement?’ because nurses have great ideas on improving health care without blowing up provincial budgets.”

Sorensen is convinced that health-care organizations, including BCNU, can become “innovation generators” by using their “global brain.”

That means front-line staff should be encouraged to come forward with ideas, and those ideas must be evaluated on how they advance strategic goals. And good ideas should be implemented, she argues. They shouldn’t just wither on the vine.

“Building a culture of innovation is tough. And there are reasons why organizational development specialists say ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast,’” notes Sorensen. “We need to nurture work cultures that encourage new ideas and support leaders who might feel threatened by change to implement good ideas.

“Organizations that innovate tend to outperform those that don’t. Right now I’m seeing positive signs at several health authorities, and I’m encouraging them to keep doing things differently.”

“We make progress by building trusting relationships with people.”

Sorensen acknowledges that it will take time for nurses to grow in confidence and step forward into leadership roles because nursing has been subservient for much its history. But she says BCNU will be a cheerleader for that to happen.

“And I need to be candid about making this change as I lead my own organization,” says Sorensen. “BCNU is also affected by the top-down culture in health care – we need to be better at innovation and be entirely focused on achieving what members value.”

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FEATURE

For Sorensen, change begins through sound governance.

“Last year BCNU Council spent a lot of time rebuilding, refreshing and stabilizing our union, and I led the development of a new, three-year strategic plan that was set in place in June 2017,” she reports. “In the past we developed strategic plans on an annual basis, but I felt it was important to establish a longer-range vision. We’re putting an emphasis on strong member advocacy, increasing transparency and accountability, and living our values.”

Sorensen also sees a strong connection between employee engagement and achieving organizational goals.

“One of the things I want to build at BCNU is a culture of empowerment and best practices. I won’t be satisfied until our union is recognized as the best employer in the labour movement and in health care.”

Sorensen argues that hiring, retaining and supporting the best people means that staff can better resource stewards and regional officers. This in turn will improve member services and increase

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success. “My job is to build the structures and the relationships to make that happen.”

BUILDING ON EXCELLENCE

Sorensen credits her mother as being one of her biggest mentors in her early career. “My mom was a great example of a strong woman who could get things done,” she says. “When you step out as a new activist it’s important to know what success looks like, and my mom was an example of success for her whole career.”

Sorensen’s mother was head nurse at Kamloops’s Royal Inland Hospital prior to her retirement. The younger nurse, now leading a provincial organization, says she often reflects on her mother’s experiences and teaching throughout her career.

“Because I’m new in the president’s role one of the things I worry about is making the wrong decision,” she admits. “But I guard against mistakes by asking a lot of questions and consulting people who are subject-matter experts.”

Sorensen notes that a former mentor and nursing instructor reminded her “that she didn’t need to know all of the answers, but she did need to know where to find them.” It’s advice she still lives by. “I take comfort that, in the midst of not having all of the answers, I reach out to other BCNU leaders for clarity on health-care issues and to those outside of BCNU who are leading progress in their own organizations.”

Sorensen knows that mistakes will happen, as they do for all leaders. But when something goes sideways the union’s collective leadership will have contingency plans to soften the landing and mitigate damage.

COMMITTING TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUITY

Part of an advocate’s role is building confidence in others so that, in time, people gain the confidence to advocate for themselves. And that kind of structured encouragement is why Sorensen strongly supports BCNU’s equity caucuses.

“BCNU human rights and equity caucuses perform a vital role in our union,” says Sorensen, who served as chair of the union’s Human Rights and Equity Committee and as a member of the Indigenous Leadership Circle (Sorensen is Métis). “Caucuses give members of marginalized communities a space to define what they need and harness the support of a strong union to advocate for it.”

Sorensen stresses that BCNU’s mission goes well beyond negotiating and enforcing employment contracts.

The union must also fight to make workplaces fairer for members with disabilities, for people of colour and Indigenous people, and for LGBTQ people.

As a young adult in Kamloops, Sorensen saw a lot of discrimination directed towards First Nations people, which made her sensitive to the concerns of marginalized groups. But she feels good work has been done in this area to acknowledge and honour Indigenous culture, the diversity of the population and recognize how it enriches society.

“Now there are Aboriginal celebrations, multicultural and Pride events in Kamloops and a lot of progress has been made on cultural healing and embracing diversity.

“We certainly need to go further, but

in the meantime we are also seeing positive changes in health care such as the integration of Indigenous navigators into the system,” she says.

“They help clinicians deliver services in culturally sensitive ways and help First Nations people understand the system. It’s a huge step forward.”

“We need to balance our careers with a focus on our own health.”

‘IGNORING THE HATERS’ AND MAKING PROGRESS

All leaders are inspired by people who try to make the world a better place.

Sorensen says that two of those people that she admires are Michelle and Barak Obama.

“I have great admiration for the Obamas, especially for Michelle. She’s a woman who was always in the public spotlight and had to deal with a lot of racism and anger,” she says. “But she stayed positive and encouraged us to ignore the haters and be positive in life.

“Michelle Obama also did symbolic things like planting a vegetable garden at the White House to promote nutrition and health. That simple activity led to healthy eating programs in schools and made a difference in national health outcomes for children,” she says.

Michelle Obama also believes that incremental changes will eventually add up to big gains, says Sorensen. “I remember being at the union’s convention several years ago and listening to a long list of things that BCNU had accomplished over 30 years.

Individually the items didn’t seem like they had much impact – but taken together they are huge gains for nurses.”

need their support to improve health services.”

She notes that the last few years at BCNU have been difficult, and says she’s committed to repairing broken bonds. “But we need to go further than just fixing problems. I’m determined to build an organization that’s rooted in our values of fairness and social justice – for members, for staff and for the public.”

BEING THE CHANGE

INVESTING IN RELATIONSHIPS

Sorensen believes you can get a lot done by building trusting relationships with people.

“There are better ways of doing business than living in a world of conflict all the time,” she argues. “We need to be firm about making improvements. But we make progress by building trusting relationships with people. Good relationships accelerate solutions.”

This approach to relationships is informed by Sorensen’s commitment to the principle of servant leadership.

“I hope that BCNU stewards, staff and regional leaders see me as someone who won’t ask them to do something I won’t do myself,” she says. “That might mean putting in long days to serve members, or filing a lot of grievances.

My commitment is to build an organization that supports them and offers them satisfying relationships.”

Sorensen wants to build BCNU into a centre of excellence in member services. She also believes it’s important to invest in building the union’s brand with the public. “I want the public to trust us. When nurses speak on health issues I want the public to believe what we say and take action when we

“One of my biggest joys is spending time with BCNU leaders, especially those who are working hard in the regions and workplaces,” says Sorensen. “I hope I can demonstrate that anyone can cause positive change to happen.”

She says that activists’ efforts to reduce workload and improve patient care will eventually produce results, and it’s heartwarming that they never give up on those goals.

She also wants stewards and regional officers to know that we can lead powerful lives when we have personal experiences of making change happen.

“One of the innovative teams involved in great public outreach are BCNU members who volunteered this summer at the Pacific National Exhibition,” says Sorensen. “They linked with people from all over the world and showed our profession and our union in a really positive light.”

Sorensen wants nurses to know that they can make a difference in the life of each patient. But they need to take care of themselves first. “It’s hard to give our best to patients if we’re tired ourselves.

So we need to balance our careers with a focus on our own health.

“We won’t change the health-care system overnight. But we will make progress by supporting each other and building good relationships along the way.” •

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ON A

MISSION Nurses are making a difference applying their skills in countries around the world

O

PINION POLL after opinion poll tells us that Canadians place a high value on their public healthcare system.

Medicare is a source of national pride, and whatever challenges the system faces, most people agree that we should work to improve access to high-quality health care that’s provided on the basis of need, and not wallet size.

Nurses also regularly top polls, and are ranked as the most trusted professional occupation. It goes to show the value and importance of nursing for all Canadians.

It can sometimes be easy to forget the importance of health care in a developed county like ours. We only need to look at the social conditions of the majority of the world’s population who lack proper access to care

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OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

to be reminded of the value of Canadian health-care workers.

BCNU values nurses who volunteer their time to provide care to people and communities in need outside of Canada, and the union’s Humanitarian Mission Fund supports members participating in this important work.

Available to all members in good standing, the fund can be accessed by individuals who take part in a humanitarian project or a group of members serving on a mission.

This feature profiles just a few of the BC nurses who are committed to sharing their skills with health-care workers and their patients in developing countries.

All of the nurses profiled have benefited from the Humanitarian Mission Fund.

Read their stories and think about how you could make a difference too.

SYDNI LUTZKE UBC-O Nurses in Ghana Learning about community development and rural health issues SYDNI LUTZKE’S PATH to humanitarian work in Africa began in 2014 during her first year of nursing school at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus (UBC-O). Soon after her program began, the Cranbrook native heard about the six-week global health practicum experience for UBC-O nursing students in Ghana.

International Development Agency, began working on the development of a rural nurse practitioner program (RNPP) in Ghana, a West African country of 28 million.

The RNPP is designed to provide nurses with advanced knowledge and skills in community development and rural health issues, with particular emphasis on the health and well-being of

“We could catch bits and pieces through pointing and body language.”

Sydni Lutzke

Global health prioritizes improving and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. For nurses and other health-care workers on the ground, it means working with communities, building on their capacities and working collaboratively with African colleagues to address health inequities.

“The university encourages you to get involved early on, mentioning that there is an opportunity for a specialty practicum available in year four of nursing school,” says Lutzke.

The practicum began almost 20 years ago, when a group of nursing instructors from the Okanagan, with the help of a grant from the Canadian

women and children.

The instructors realized that health-care training could happen on both sides of the Atlantic. They led the first group of fourth-year Okanagan nursing students to Ghana in 2001. Today UBC-O students are still making the life-changing trek.

Lutzke says she was interested in the opportunity right away. To qualify she said she had to be involved early on in meetings and presentations about how nurses could help. “I was also required to keep my grade point average above 75 percent and fill out an online screening process and cover the entire cost of my trip.”

In January, Lutzke found

out that she was selected to join 13 other students on a six-week specialty nursing practicum led by two instructors. The team of student nurses was given a few days of orientation in advance of their trip. “We were instructed on relationship practice, cultural sensitivity and educated on the kinds of diseases that we might encounter, such as typhoid fever,” she says.

“I knew nothing about Ghana,” Lutzke admits, “and my travel experience had primarily been family resorttype holidays to Mexico or Jamaica.”

The student nurses landed in Ghana’s capital of Accra on March 11, 2018 and boarded a bus headed for their destination. “Even though our instructors told us how hot it would be, nothing prepares you for the above 40-degree temperatures and humidly you experience,” says Lutzke. “The sights, smells, sounds, tastes and sensations are nothing like home.”

The first two weeks of the group’s trip was spent in Tamale, Ghana’s fourth largest city with a population of over 360,000 located in the north-central part of the country. Most of the residents are Muslim. “The culture there required us to cover our knees and shoulders, which added to the heat you felt,” says Lutzke.

The group worked at a teaching hospital, but Lutzke says she was shocked to see how ill-equipped the facility was. “Not a single ward had air conditioning, the cleanliness needed attention, there were limited resources in the supply room and there were no IV bags for example.”

Before leaving for Ghana, the students fundraised to bring along many of the supplies they would need.

“Basics like gloves, hand sanitizers and dressings were not readily available, and we had to bring them with us.”

They spent the last four weeks of the practicum continued on page 29

COLLABORATING FOR CARE Despite a long day of running health screening clinics in Cheshagu, a small rural village in Ghana, UBC students, instructors and translators were still all smiles.

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REWARDING WORK Canadian surgical team members perform a lifechanging thyroid surgery.

Inset: Kamloops OR nurse Koos Meijerhof (right) poses with medical device sterilization worker Pa Lam at the Serrekunda Hospital in The Gambia.

KOOS MEIJERHOF Medicos en Acción Performing much-needed thyroid surgery in The Gambia “MANY WOMEN OFTEN wear oversized scarves around their neck to hide the goiters caused by thyroid disease,” says Koos Meijerhof, an operating room nurse at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

Meijerhof has just returned from The Gambia.

He explains that the condition is common in the country, but it’s not gender exclusive. “Culturally, there is a stigma – sometimes it is believed that goiters are a result of something bad the person has done.”

This past spring was the 56-year-old’s third trip to the poor West African nation with the volunteer-run organization Medicos en Acción (Doctors in Action).

Founded in 2001, the Kamloops-based charitable society primarily provides health-care services in Guatemala and The Gambia.

A graduate of University College of the Cariboo, Meijerhof has worked in the OR for nearly 20 years. He describes The Gambia as flat and dry. It stretches 450

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kilometres along the Gambia River and is the smallest West African nation, with a population of just over two million with a life expectancy of 61 years for men and 63 years for women.

The Gambia’s economy is small and vulnerable, and relies heavily on tourism and agriculture, which is often negatively impacted due to long periods of drought.

“I went into nursing to help the population and that is what I do when I go to The Gambia,” says Meijerhof. “It costs volunteers about $4,500 that they pay out-of- pocket.” He notes that team members also organize fundraisers and silent auctions for the purchase of medicines, supplies, pay for patient support and travel, and to pay for the use of operating facilities.

Meijerhof describes the working conditions in the country as spartan, and says volunteers stay in very basic accommodations. “Power outages and water shortages are frequent – at least three to four times a day,” he says.

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

“So, we make do with sponge baths.”

Meijerhof made his first trip to The Gambia in 2014, where he volunteered at Serrekunda Hospital, the main health-care facility outside of the capital Banjul.

Like many developing countries, most of The Gambia’s population resides in urban areas. “Serrekunda Hospital serves hundreds of thousands of people,” says Meijerhof. “In Western eyes it’s very run down and with limited resources in the surgical department.” He says the facility was built as part of a Taiwanese development project that later sat empty for a many years because there were no resources to

operate it. “It was common to see rats scurrying about and vultures on the roof,” he says.

But Meijerhof reports that over the years conditions at the hospital have begun to improve and today there are nursing staff on the wards as well as surgeons and doctors from Cuba and Syria. In spite of the challenging conditions, it is here that Meijerhof and others in the Medicos en Acción surgical group perform thyroid surgeries.

“People with enlarged thyroids face many hormonal changes including but not limited to depression and marital-related issues,” explains Meijerhof.

Begun by a group of volunteers in 2001, this Kamloops-based organization organizes regular medical missions to perform operations in Guatemala and The Gambia.

The group is always looking for individuals who are able to work in a team environment.

Experience working in developing countries is an asset but not a requirement. There is also time available to explore

the local areas and culture.

Medical personnel needed: • Surgeons • Anesthesiologists • Registered Nurses (OR – recovery room, surgical ward) • Biomedical engineers • Audiologists For more information: www.medicos-en-accion.com

“It’s very intense from the time we are there until we leave.”

Koos Meijerhof

“They are like two clenched fists in the neck and those are the masses that we remove in surgery. The post-operative impact it has, especially on women who can now show off their neck, is life changing.”

In 2016 Medicos en Acción began working with Serrekunda hospital staff to build a national thyroid clinic at the facility so that all patients in The Gambia who suffer from the disease could be examined and treated at one site. The group continues to work with The Gambia’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to provide access to standardized thyroid function tests and affordable medications.

This includes training and education. “We have trained ward and post-operative care nurses, particularly for thyroid disease,” reports Meijerhof. “The teams that go there have also educated operating room technologists.”

Meijerhof describes his volunteer work with Medicos en Acción as both challenging and rewarding.

“It’s very intense from the time we are there until we leave. We work 10 to 12 hours a day. The local staff that works with us does as well and do not get paid overtime for staying longer,” he notes. “We all make a big commitment. The local staff learn a lot and really appreciate we are coming from the other side of the world to help Gambians with their surgical needs.” •

UBC-O Nurses in Ghana continued from page 27 running their own clinics in small villages located around towns like Bolgatana in the country’s north, Kumasi, a major city in the centre of the country, and towns along the Cape Coast in the south west.

UBC-O has well-established relationships with all of the communities the students visited. “The chief would be alerted of our arrival and would let people know we were coming,” says Lutzke. “Then they would walk for miles to come to see us. We would start at 7:00 a.m. and work past 7:00 p.m., sometimes seeing over 300 patients a day.” The evenings were spent preparing for the next day’s events that included making presentations to local health-care workers and villagers.

The student nurses worked by themselves, without the assistance of doctors or other health-care workers. “[The practicum] is a university partnership not connected to a larger agency, but we were able to refer patients to local doctors,” explains Lutzke.

And while there were some translators, Lutzke says that because of the various dialects in Ghana, it was often like a game of charades trying to determine a patient’s ailment. “We could catch bits and pieces through pointing and body language,” she says. “But everyone would get a head to toe physical assessment.”

Lutzke reports that the students saw many patients who were dizzy, thirsty,

troubled with back pain and who had swollen feet from performing arduous manual labour. To help, she and her fellow student nurses provided diagrams that demonstrated stretching, and good body mechanics.

The conditions Lutzke witnessed are all too common in rural Ghana, where access to health services is limited to underfunded teaching or mission hospitals. “It was heartbreaking to see the kids.

They were going to work in fields instead of school, they had little in the way of shoes or clothes, and no health care,” recalls Lutzke about the rural and remote villages they visited.

When comparing her experience in Ghana to nursing in Canada, Lutzke says there’s less guesswork at home. “There is some ease in knowing what kind of acuity I am dealing with, and I know what to watch for. Whereas in Ghana, I had a much broader spectrum to consider, and the patient couldn’t always tell me their condition.”

One of the other learnings Lutzke took from her six weeks in the African country was the importance of selfcare. “We were staying in non-air-conditioned guest houses, we were always covered in layers of sweat, sunscreen and bug spray and we were physically and mentally tired,” she says. To recuperate, Lutzke and the others in her cohort spent a long weekend in Mole National Park, a wildlife refuge established in 1958.

“I was overwhelmed by the

sound of nature, the fresh air, and the expansive views. I saw elephants playing in the water in the distance and I could feel the tears begin to pool in my eyes – this was the first time I saw elephants in real life and cannot even begin to describe the gratitude I felt at that moment.”

Lutzke is now back home and began working on the vascular floor at Kelowna General Hospital after graduating this June. It’s clear that the visit to Ghana was a life-changing experience for the new nurse. “I have a passion for experiencing new cultures, learning from others, sharing my knowledge and collaborating with other health-care professionals to improve the well-being of each individual, no matter their location on the globe.” •

PASSION FOR LEARNING Sydni Lutzke’s first day of practicum in the pediatric ward at the Tamale Teaching Hospital in Ghana was captured by one of her classmates.

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MONICA BRENNAN Team Broken Earth Performing life-changing surgeries for rural Guatemalans MONICA BRENNAN SAYS the lineups were seemingly endless when she first arrived at the temporary hospital in Guatemala City in January.

“There was just this need – this infinite need – and it became a matter of screening people who were the most appropriate,” says the Lions Gate Hospital recovery room nurse. “Sadly, some of them were just

suffering in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake leveled the city in January 2010, killing over 100,000 people. Since that inaugural mission, medical support has grown rapidly over the years, making it possible for Team Broken Earth to expand mission trips to other needy counties including Nepal, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

“They just needed one more recovery room nurse, so the timing felt right and I just decided that yes, I would go!”

Monica Brennan

too small - the children had to be a minimum of 10 kilograms or we couldn’t accommodate them with the equipment and resources we had.”

Brennan was one of a group of 22 Canadian health-care professionals who travelled to Central America this year with Team Broken Earth.

Founded by Dr. Andrew Furey, a Canadian orthopedic trauma surgeon, the organization was born in the wake of the devastation and

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Brennan always knew she wanted to be a nurse, and went into nursing education after graduating from high school. The RN has worked in acute-care settings in BC since 1982. Now semi-retired and working casual, she says she had been looking for an overseas volunteer opportunity for a while, but hadn’t landed on a specific organization until a chance conversation with a colleague tempted fate.

“It was actually somewhat last minute,” she laughs.

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

“They already had the group mostly together and just needed one more recovery room nurse, so the timing felt right and I just decided that yes, I would go!”

Brennan says that many remote health-care facilities in Guatemala are understaffed and under-stocked, lacking essential supplies, vaccines, or medications.

Once her team was set up in Guatemala City, villagers from the country’s western highlands were brought to the city to treat.

“Patients were brought in by a volunteer outreach team that go into the villages to provide health care and education. If they see people with surgical needs, they are offered [surgery] and their names are put forward,” she explains. “The families stay in a hostel in the city, coming to the facility on our first day for pre-op screening and on the day of their surgery.”

Most of the villagers Brennan cared for were

Indigenous people who spoke their own Mayan dialect. But despite the language and cultural barriers, Brennan says the locals were warm and hospitable. “I think they’re pretty brave to put their faith in us foreigners to take their children into surgery,” she says. “These locals were wonderful – they were always upbeat, positive and thankful – they cooked us lunch every day!”

Mission members volunteer time and expertise and are expected to fundraise to cover the cost of their own travel, meals and accommodation while Team Broken Earth supplies medical and surgical equipment needed for the duration of the stay. Brennan and her colleagues each travelled with two enormous hockey bags packed with essential supplies for a week’s worth of surgeries. She says the supplies helped to ensure that the team maintained

SURGICAL TASK FORCE Team Broken Earth volunteers perform surgery in Guatemala this January. From left: RN Justine Cullimore, Dr. Jim Hunter, Dr. Rob Fingland and RN Kristi Lange. Inset: BC nurses Monica Brennan (left) and Sheena Graham volunteered on this year’s mission.

Canadian standards in all aspects of care.

“Mostly we worked on cleft palates, hernias and syndactyly surgeries,” she reports. “These are the types of surgeries that, had they lived in Vancouver, would be done in the first few weeks of life and would be routine, but these villagers don’t have continued on page 32

Team Broken Earth is a volunteer task force composed of physicians, nurses and physiotherapists from across Canada and beyond, committed to delivering and improving health care where it’s needed most.

An important part of Team Broken Earth’s mandate is education.

That means everything from conducting conferences and seminars to sharing the latest in medical techniques and health-care knowledge.

From fundraising to participating on a mission, there are many different ways nurses can become a member of Team Broken Earth and help us help those in need.

For more information: www.brokenearth.ca

JULIE LITTLE Doctors Without Borders Building health-care facilities in war-torn Iraq FLYING OVER THE CITY of Erbil in northern Iraq, Julie Little looked out the window of her airplane to see a landscape that was both modern and ancient.

Glass high-rises spiraled upwards from ancient markets and minarets. Beyond, a dusty plain stretched as far as the eye could see. It was January 2017, and the weather was cold and dry.

This was the Vancouver nurse’s fifth humanitarian mission with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders), but it would be her first mission to a conflict zone within a kilometre of live artillery fire.

MSF volunteers are often found managing Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, cholera epidemics in Yemen or maternal feeding centres in Tanzania. But the organization also works in some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones providing medical care to all who need it.

Helping those in need was Little’s prime motivation for entering the nursing profession. “I wanted to be a nurse since I was in Grade eight,” she says. “But I didn’t know the direction my career would take until I met an Australian nurse on a backpacking trip to Kenya.”

It was that encounter

in her year off between high school and university where she learned about MSF’s global medical missions. And her initial curiosity about MSF turned to fascination.

“I’ve always liked adventures and the idea of doing international relief work is very exciting to me,” says Little. “Prior to going to Iraq I did other MSF missions in Africa and the Middle East, so I felt ready to work close to front-line fighting when they offered me the assignment.”

Little’s mission in Iraq saw her setting up trauma stabilization points (TSPs) outside the city of Mosul and treating civilians who were injured by bombs, shrapnel and snipers. Mosul is only 50 km northwest of Erbil, but getting there involved a two-hour drive through dangerous mountain passes.

Mosul could only be safely approached from the north because Islamic State (ISIS) insurgents still occupied the southern part of the city.

“When we arrived in Mosul we were only a few miles from the front line and we could hear explosions and see dust plumes as buildings collapsed from artillery fire,”

BACK AT HOME Community nurse Julie Little says there are many similarities between patient populations in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and those in conflict zones. “Both are disoriented and in crisis,” she says

says Little. “Our mission was to turn buildings into emergency TSPs – mostly for wounded civilians.”

The MSF team set up its first TSP in a rehabilitated house, and the second was in a mixture of local houses and tents. “Once TSPs are in place we stabilize patients and transport them to hospitals in about 30 minutes,” says Little.

MSF teams are very diverse. Medical professionals, logistics experts and engineers all work together to build medical facilities from what they can find in the field, or from materials shipped from MSF warehouses in the region.

“MSF logistics guys are amazing,” says Little.

“They’re super resourceful – like people who can build space ships out of duct continued on page 32

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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TEAM BROKEN EARTH continued from page 30

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS continued from page 31

access to this level of health care.”

Without the ability to suck, a child with a cleft palate deformity can have, among other complications, difficulty feeding, swallowing and can suffer from chronic ear infections. “You could see how difficult it would have been for them to get nutrition without a palate,” she says.

It’s clear Brennan was deeply moved by her team’s work and how it affected their patients’ families. “Post op, some of the parents didn’t recognize their own children, in fact at least one said to me ‘are you sure that this is my child?’” she says. “It’s transformational – not only do they look different, they are going to be able to function differently, their nutrition can improve, they will have more self-confidence and their lives will change in a totally different direction.”

The last minute opportunity to join the group has Brennan recalling why she went into nursing in the first place – to help people who can’t help themselves. And the experience has given her an appetite for more. In fact, she reports that she’s already committed to returning to the Central American country next January with a larger team and larger ambitions. •

tape and cardboard. That’s literally what it’s like setting up sterile treatment facilities in a war zone.”

One of Little’s biggest accomplishments in Iraq was turning a rubble-strewn building into a hospital that provided tertiary-level care.

“After we set up our first two facilities our group met an Iraqi medical team treating wounded civilians in an abandoned retirement facility,” says Little. “When we found them they had a few beds, but it was mostly cots on the floor.

“Within six weeks MSF and the Iraqi health ministry turned it into a 50-bed hospital with trauma bays, an ER, a surgical suite, a maternity centre and a pharmacy,” she reports. “And our logisticians built a safe room and reinforced the hospital roof to protect us from

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“Logisticians built a safe room to protect us from mortar blasts.”

Julie Little

mortar blasts. It was a great collaboration.”

As the Iraqi army and western coalition forces re-took more of Mosul from ISIS, local civilians heard about the new facility and came to volunteer. Some cleaned and others helped with labour to expand the hospital.

“It was very gratifying to be one of the first health professionals treating patients in Mosul,” says Little. “As ISIS abandoned the city other organizations moved in with extra surgical capacity and that helped a lot.”

When Little isn’t on overseas missions with MSF she works in Vancouver’s Downtown Community Health Centre.

“I’ve always felt the

patient populations at MSF and in the Downtown Eastside have similarities,” says Little. “Both groups are disoriented and in crisis.

“When patients are in a disoriented space it’s important for them to connect with someone they trust,” she explains. “That creates a foundation and they might start a journey to better health. When I get to build those foundations it’s immensely gratifying.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re crawling out from a pile of rubble in Iraq that used to be your home or you’re waking up outside in the Downtown Eastside, the look of disorientation is the same,” says Little. “And at those points in life everyone should get the health care they need.” •

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is an international humanitarian medical non-governmental organization that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health-care. Its teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff.

Founded in 1971 by a group of journalists and doctors, today, Doctors Without Borders is a worldwide movement of more than 42,000 people.

For more information: www.msf.org

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

YOUR PENSION SECURING YOUR FUTURE

GETTING READY FOR RETIREMENT IS YOUR RETIREMENT on the horizon? It has a way of sneaking up on you – so it’s never too early to start thinking about how you will approach this new stage in life and consider the opportunities that await you.

Whether it’s travel, a new hobby or beginning a new career, it’s good to think about what this new phase will look like, and to be sure you can finance this next step.

You need to be sure your money will last until the end of your life and, if necessary, beyond. Below are some steps that Municipal Pension Plan or Public Service Pension Plan members should be aware of before your retirement is upon you.

GET THE MUNICIPAL PENSION PLAN RETIREMENT PACKAGE Three to four months before your anticipated date of retirement, you can obtain the retirement package from your employer’s payroll and benefit personnel or from the Pension Corporation (1-800668-6335). Speak to Pension Corporation staff to review the options available to you or visit the pension plan websites for more information: mpp.pensionsbc.ca or pspp. pensionsbc.ca. Members in

requirements and details are outlined in the package.

ENSURE YOU RECEIVE SEVERANCE PAY

pension plans other than MPP and PSPP should contact their employer for retirement details.

NOTIFY YOUR EMPLOYER

Thirty days before retiring, send notification to the employer (your manager) that you will be retiring on a specific date. For pension purposes ensure your last date for pay is scheduled as the last day of your last month.

Submit all documentation provided by your employer to the pension plan as soon as possible. It usually takes a few months to process your paperwork, verify your details and ensure the forms are completed correctly.

The first pension cheque will be sent close to the end of the first month of your retirement.

APPLY FOR THE NBA RETIREE BENEFIT PROGRAM

BCNU has a benefit program that’s separate from your pension plan and that provides a range of extended health-care benefits.

Visit the BCNU website and search for the Retiree Benefit Program or call the BCNU membership department to request that a package be sent out to you. The

You are eligible for severance pay if you are regularly employed (i.e., not casual). Under the Nurses’ Bargaining Association contract, employees with at least 10 years of service and after their 55th birthday, or those whose service is no longer required by their employer (closure of facility, etc.), will receive one week’s pay for every two years of work (pro-rated for parttime employees), 40 percent of their unused sick time (paid out) and any unused vacation time or banked overtime.

Thinking ahead of time about all of the steps required to properly plan your retirement will help you make the right decisions–and ensure an easier transition to the next chapter of your life! •

WHEN CAN I RETIRE? Earliest retirement age for most Municipal employees, including nurses, is 55. Under the Municipal Pension Plan, you may apply for a pension as early as age 55.

However, if you retire before age 60 and you do not meet minimum age plus contributor service requirements, your pension will be reduced.

HOW IS MY PENSION CALCULATED? Your pension is based on the average of your highest five salary years and increases at a rate of two percent for each year of pensionable service, to a maximum of 35 years.

UPDATE MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2018

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PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN THE WORKPLACE

ROCK BOTTOM BURNABY HOSPITAL NURSES’ DETERMINATION SECURES MUCH NEEDED STAFFING

PERSISITENT PURSUIT Burnaby Hospital post anesthesia care unit nurse Renata Lalonde (right) successfully used the professional responsibility process to secure much-needed staff on her unit. She was supported by BCNU full-time steward Tracey Hulme (left).

“I HAVE NEVER HAD TO advocate so much!” exclaims Renata Lalonde.

The seasoned nurse has spent the last 15 years working at Burnaby Hospital, where she began in the surgical ward and emergency department. But for the last three years she has worked in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU).

Lalonde is no stranger to the challenging staffing conditions that come with working in a large and busy facility – Burnaby Hospital has 286 beds with 70,000 visits annually – but the chronic short staffing and risks to patient

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safety she encountered within the PACU motivated her to use the professional responsibility process (PRP) to safeguard her practice and protect her patients.

The PRP is an important part of the Nurses’ Bargaining Association’s (NBA) collective agreement, and it’s a tool that lets members report critical incidents such as those that jeopardize patients’ safety. Under the PRP, BCNU and health employers are expected to come together and resolve safety issues when nurses feel their ability to meet professional standards is

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

being threatened. When raising concerns, nurses have the opportunity to describe the events or circumstances that contributed to their concern. The process allows them to address issues such as employer policies and procedures, workload and staffing and workplace communication.

There are seven operating rooms at Burnaby Hospital, where surgeries are performed year-round. PACU helps stabilize the approximately 40 patients a day that come out of the OR after hip and knee replacements and other types or orthope-

dic surgeries. PACU nurses monitor airways, treat pain, ensure a patient’s vital signs are normal, and that they are alert and responsive before being released or transferred to another unit for further care. The Burnaby Hospital PACU is staffed by nine fulltime nurses and about four part-time nurses between 7:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m., with additional on-call nurses for emergency evening surgeries.

It’s a high acuity environment that requires a patientnurse ratio of two-to-one, unless a patient is vented – when the ratio should be one-to-one.

The high volume of patients also means staffing levels have to be optimal at all times. Unfortunately, because the PACU at Burnaby Hospital doesn’t have the staffing to support safe recovery, the OR is often placed on hold and a log-jam is created until the receiving unit is able to safely transfer stable and recovered patients, and resume accepting new ones.

It’s a stressful situation for nurses, as the PACU will also receive push-back from OR staff when their unit is placed on hold. The chronic short staffing means nurses are caught in a tug-of-war between wanting patients to recover safely and ensuring further operations are not delayed.

Lalonde reports that she and her co-workers were burning out from the volume

of extra shifts and overtime they were working to cover baseline staffing. There simply weren’t enough nurses scheduled and there were never any replacements for nurses on sick or holiday leave.

She says that she and the other nurses had reached “rock bottom.”

After having discussions with Burnaby Hospital fulltime steward Tracey Hulme in January 2017, Lalonde

HOW TO CONTACT YOUR REGIONAL PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY ADVOCATES If you need help, please contact your current professional responsibility advocates listed below.

Central Vancouver Kelly Zander kellyzander2@bcnu.org

RIVA Romeo de Leon romeodeleon@bcnu.org

Coastal Mountain Genevieve Dallimore genevievedallimore@bcnu.org

Shaughnessy Heights Manpreet Mann manpreetmann@bcnu.org

East Kootenay Samantha Molloy samantha_molloy@bcnu.org

Simon Fraser Roy Hansen rhansen@bcnu.org

Fraser Valley Louisa Tillack hltillack@bcnu.org

South Fraser Valley Edmundo David edmundodavid@bcnu.org

North East Barbara Erickson barbaraerickson@bcnu.org

South Islands Daphne Wass daphnewass@bcnu.org

North West Prisicilla de Medeiros priscillademedeiros@bcnu.org

Thompson North Okanagan Myrna Nichols myrnanichols@bcnu.org

Okanagan Similkameen Deborah Duperreault dduperreault@bcnu.org

Vancouver Metro Luba Veverytsa lyuboveverytsa@bcnu.org

Pacific Rim Sharon Fulton sharonfulton@bcnu.org

West Kootenay Glenna Lynch glennalynch@bcnu.org

decided to take the first step in the PRP by having a conversation with her excluded manager. At a meeting the following February she highlighted the fact that nurses on her unit worked short-staffed for 25 days in December 2016 and a day in January 2017 that involved the OR being placed on hold several times throughout the day.

“We had often been working short, vacations were not replaced and sometimes people were sick,” reports Lalonde. She says that she and her fellow nurses asked for staff levels to be increased, and that all absences be replaced.

Unfortunately, the discussion did little to improve the staffing deficiency. In fact, it appeared that the employer was downplaying the situation. “Management said there were simply no nurses to call in to help,” says Lalonde. “The program clerk was asking us to come in early, stay late and come in on our days off.”

Unsatisfied with the employer’s response, and with no major solutions forthcoming, Lalonde decided to escalate her professional practice concerns to step two of the process by filing a professional responsibility form (PRF) the following March.

The PRF allows nurses to explain their concerns in writing and record why they are seeking change. Lalonde’s PRF went to her worksite Professional Responsibility Committee (PRC), which is

comprised of two standing members, (one from the Nurses’ Bargaining Association [NBA] and one from the employer) as well as the nurse with the concern, a union rep and the excluded manager. Under the PRP, after a PRF is filed, the PRC must hold a meeting within 14 days.

After this meeting, the PRC has 30 days to submit a final written report including action items and timelines.

Lalonde’s PRF resulted in the creation of one new part-time position, but she says it was not nearly enough to alleviate the staff shortage.

“The response was very disappointing and only tip-toed around the issue of staffing levels,” states Hulme, who worked with Lalonde through the PRP. Lalonde decided to file another PRF. Hulme says that Lalonde’s determination was admirable. All of the PACU nurses wanted to see change, but it was Lalonde who did the heavy lifting, she says.

When the PRC met again in April, the parties agreed to an action plan and committed to reassess the situation within 60 days. Unfortunately, there was still no action after 60 days and more meetings. “Nothing had really changed around the staffing crisis,” says Lalonde. It was evident to her that

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PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN THE WORKPLACE

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY PROCESS GUIDING PRINCIPLES

“The program clerk was asking us to come in early, stay late and come in on our days off.”

Renata Lalonde

circumstances were not improving.

If a practice issue cannot be resolved by the PRC, it can be referred to step three of the PRP, and can take one of two paths: practice concerns not directly related to staffing are dealt with by the senior review committee (SRC) – a health authority-wide body with union and employer reps. But if the hiring of additional staff is needed to address the practice concern, it is referred to the health authority’s Nurse Relations Committee (NRC). This new committee was established under the terms of the NBA 2014-2019 collective agreement that was ratified in May 2016. The NRC is composed of union representatives and employers who meet bi-weekly.

In this case, both PRC co-chairs agreed to advance the issue to the NRC after it became evident that no local resolution could be reached.

Hulme acknowledges that 2017 was indeed a difficult year for Burnaby Hospital PACU nurses, many of whom continued to work under trying conditions while waiting for a

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resolution to their practice concerns. “Another nurse in the PACU filed another PRF in August related to staffing concerns,” she reports.

“There was no nurse for the first day shift, no evening on-call nurse and no night nurse available – at one point Lalonde was by herself and had to recover her patient in the ICU.” But a combination of relief and pride swept the PACU when nurses received news in May 2018 that employer reps on the NRC agreed to increase the unit’s staffing by 3.9 FTE permanent positions.

Lalonde feels more than justified in her pursuit of additional staffing. “It was definitely a lot of time and effort, and you have to work hard to document,” she says.

“This news was incredible.

It demonstrated how short our department was and how much help we needed to keep patients safe.”

Lalonde reports that the new positions will only be posted after the unit finishes revamping its rotation schedule.

“But everyone in the PACU is very happy,” she says. •

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

1. The professional responsibility (PR) process is about quality improvement and employee engagement.

• The process is designed to identify problems, but it does not involve blame.

• The PR clause (NBA Article 59) provides a mechanism for nurses to raise concerns related to their practice.

• Nurses and management should never feel intimidated or threatened by engaging in the PR process, rather it is viewed as a positive contribution.

• The PR process fosters solution-based teamwork.

2. Respectful and genuine dialogue between nurses and their managers is the foundation of the PR process.

• Nurses and health authorities support respectful, collaborative and transparent dialogue between nurses and managers.

• Circumstances where managers and/or nurses feel intimidated or threatened to engage in dialogue are serious and require immediate supportive action.

• Both the NBA and the health authorities are committed to supporting and sustaining healthy relationships at the local level.

3. All parties have responsibility and accountability to the PR process.

• The PR clause will be used for problem solving related to practice concerns.

• Nurses and managers both have the responsibility and accountability to model collaboration and cooperation throughout the process.

• All parties will accept responsibility through clearly stated practice concern(s) and a commitment to explore shared solutions • Fundamental to this principle is ensuring that all managers and nurses are informed about their responsibilities in the process.

4. The most effective approach to resolution of the practice concerns should be at the local level whenever possible.

• If shared solutions can be identified, embraced and implemented at the local level; they are more likely to succeed.

• A practice concern may not be resolved at the early stages of the PR process for a number of reasons that may require further investigation to understand the issue.

• Advancing the practice concern to a higher level does not reflect negatively on any of the parties involved.

COUNCIL PROFILE HERE’S WHO’S WORKING FOR YOU

LIFELONG LEARNER WEST KOOTENAY CHAIR RON POLAND QUICK FACTS NAME Ron Poland.

GRADUATED 2003 Selkirk College.

UNION POSITION West Kootenay chair.

WHY I SUPPORT BCNU? "I just love the idea of unionism. I think we need to move more into the social aspect of what unions do for our whole community and society.

Unions are a determinant of health."

RON POLAND KNOWS change. Originally trained as a registered animal health tech, he returned to school, completed his diploma in nursing from Castlegar’s Selkirk College in 2003 and immediately began working in the oncology department at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital.

“I grew up in a small town where it was expected that you graduated from school, got a job, worked 40 years and then retired,” he laughs.

“Me, I’ve gone to university twice, I’ve had five careers – from finance to travel – and nursing has been the best career choice I’ve ever made.”

Activism came early in Poland’s career. “In school I was what you’d call a ‘mature’ student so when I got into nursing I was older than a lot of my peers,” he recalls. “I was the guy saying things like ‘this just doesn’t feel right’ or ‘I don’t think they [the employer] can do that sort of thing.’”

Poland became a worksite steward soon after establishing himself at Kootenay Boundary. He later became a worksite steward coordinator before serving as

BCNU West Kootenay region treasurer. When sitting regional chair Lorne Burkart decided not to run again, Poland chose to put his name forward in the 2016 regional election. “I worried about what was going to happen with our local membership,” he says.

“Lorne was such a strong leader with a huge historical knowledge on unionism.”

Poland believes that working in oncology for well over a decade has given him an appreciation for the resilience of those who face significant challenges.

“It’s very rewarding being an oncology nurse. Chemo patients are the most resilient, incredible people, and nursing is not just medical – there’s a whole holistic aspect to nursing that is so rewarding,” he says. No longer at the bedside, Poland says he misses the role. “But now, as region chair, I’m nursing the nurses instead of the patients.”

New in the role, Poland feels ready to face the challenge head on. “Now that the first year is almost up, there is an expectation that I put my name forward for committees this September,”

he reports. “With last year as a foundation, I’m looking forward to the next two years and taking on more committee roles.”

Now, Poland chuckles as he remembers someone telling him that he probably didn’t know what he was getting into after being elected chair. “We work seven days a week it seems, and as chair you feel responsible for those sites that don’t have stewards.

We’re always trying to encourage members – everybody is busy.”

Poland says the regional chair role isn’t easy, but confesses he’s enjoyed a “brilliant” first year working with other chairs on BCNU Council. “At every meeting I try to get to know somebody else sitting at the table,” he says. “You know, sometimes we disagree, but by the end of the conversation we’re laughing and joking and there is a lot of respect.”

It’s clear that Poland’s election to BCNU Council is something he doesn’t regret. “Originally I said I would do it for the three years and now it’s like, no, no, I’ve got so much more to do now.” •

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WHO CAN HELP? BCNU IS HERE TO SERVE MEMBERS

BCNU CAN. Here’s how you can get in touch with the right person to help you.

CONTACT YOUR

Stewards for all workplace concerns.

Regional Reps if your steward can’t help, or for all regional matters.

Executive Committee for all provincial, national or union policy issues.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

REGIONAL REPS CENTRAL VANCOUVER Marlene Goertzen Co-chair C 778-874-9330 marlenegoertzen@bcnu.org Judy McGrath Co-chair C 604-970-4339 jmcgrath@bcnu.org COASTAL MOUNTAIN Kath-Ann Terrett Chair C 604-828-0155 kterrett@bcnu.org EAST KOOTENAY Helena Barzilay Chair C 250-919-3310 hbarzilay@bcnu.org FRASER VALLEY Tracey Greenberg Chair C 604-785-8147 traceygreenberg@bcnu.org

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PRESIDENT Christine Sorensen C 250-819-6293 christinesorensen@bcnu.org

TREASURER Sharon Sponton C 250-877-2547 sharonsponton@bcnu.org

ACTING VICE PRESIDENT Adriane Gear C 778-679-1213 adrianegear@bcnu.org

EXECUTIVE COUNCILLOR Chris Armeanu C 604-209-4260 chrisarmeanu@bcnu.org

ACTING EXECUTIVE COUNCILLOR Rhonda Croft C 250-212-0530 rcroft@bcnu.org

NORTH EAST Danette Thomsen Chair C 250-960-8621 danettethomsen @bcnu.org

SHAUGHNESSY HEIGHTS Claudette Jut Chair C 604-786-8422 claudettejut@bcnu.org

SOUTH ISLANDS Lynnda Smith Co-chair C 250-360-7475 lynndasmith@bcnu.org

NORTH WEST Teri Forster Chair C 250-615-8077 teriforster@bcnu.org

SIMON FRASER Lynn Lagace Co-chair C 604-219-4162 lynnlagace@bcnu.org

Margo Wilton Co-chair C 250-818-4862 mwilton@bcnu.org

OKANAGAN-SIMILKAMEEN Deanna Jerowsky Acting Chair C 250-499-9134 deannajerowsky@bcnu.org

Wendy Gibbs Co-Chair C 604-240-1242 wendygibbs@bcnu.org

PACIFIC RIM Rachel Kimler Chair C 250-816-0865 rachelkimler@bcnu.org RIVA Sara Mattu Chair C 778-989-8231 saramattu@bcnu.org

OCTOBER 2018 • UPDATE MAGAZINE

SOUTH FRASER VALLEY Hardev Bhullar Co-chair C 778-855-0220 hardevbhullar@bcnu.org Walter Lumamba Co-chair C 604-512-2004 walterlumamba@bcnu.org

THOMPSON NORTH OKANAGAN Tracy Quewezance Chair C 250-320-8064 tquewezance@bcnu.org VANCOUVER METRO Meghan Friesen Chair C 604-250-0751 meghanfriesen@bcnu.org WEST KOOTENAY Ron Poland Chair C 250-368-1085 ronpoland@bcnu.org

OFF DUTY MEMBERS AFTER HOURS

BACK TO FORM ANGIE ROSE WINS ARM WRESTLING GOLD ANGIE ROSE SAYS HER kids were unsure what to think when they learned that their mom was a competitive arm wrestler. “In fact, my son’s friends were more excited when they learned about it,”, she laughingly recalls.

The licensed practical nurse and proud mom of three grew up in Quesnel.

It was there, at the age of 17, where she says that “for fun” she entered an arm-wrestling competition being held during the town’s annual Billy Barker Days summer festival.

“In that match, I beat a seasoned arm wrestler within seconds,” she says. In those years, Rose describes herself as a tomboy who

always knew she was “genetically strong.” She says the self-confidence that came from winning her first match inspired her to pursue arm wrestling as a sport, where the goal is to beat your opponent by pinning their hand onto the table.

Soon after, she was travelling the province, winning matches and competing internationally.

Rose took a break from arm wrestling after getting married and having children, but returned to the sport with gusto 16 years later, after moving to Kamloops to take a job at Overlander Residential Care.

“I had an itch to go back to arm wrestling, more so after regularly watching the TV

series Game of Arms,” Rose recalls. “I wanted to see if I still had it in me. So, I gave it a go.”

Rose was soon back to form, winning gold in the 40-and-over category for both left and right hands at this summer’s Canadian Armwrestling Championships in Laval, Quebec. She also won in the 18-and-over category, even beating a competitor in her twenties.

While Rose does a lot of strength training, she is also in peak mental condition,

“I wanted to see if I still had it in me. So, I gave it a go.”

Angie Rose

which helps her to focus on match day. “I think that comes from being competitive and from the passion I have for the sport,” says the 50-year-old about her ongoing determination.

“During my early years in the sport, I was stubborn and had stamina and a chip on my shoulder which served me well in matches, but today I’m more techni-

ARMED AND READY When not nursing, Kamloops’s Angie Rose is busy winning international arm-wresting competitions.

Inset: Winning gold at the 2018 Canadian Armwrestling Championships.

cal in my approach,” Rose explains. This allows her to beat her opponent swiftly and reduce the risk of injury.

“The longest match I faced was over four minutes, which was exhausting,” she recalls. “Your arm starts to pump with blood and your breathing becomes heavy.

It’s not ideal but you need to have stamina, be patient and hope your opponent tires out before you.

“I’m friendly with my opponents before and after a match but when I’m on the table my goal is to win,” she says. This sporting conduct reflects Rose’s humility and caring nature that comes with being a nurse. “It makes my day when I see the eyes of an elderly resident. They just light up when he sees me – he is a fan.”

Rose’s numerous gold medals led to the offer of a paid five-year contract with the World Armwrestling Federation (WAF), which she happily accepted. She’s now preparing for the WAF’s 40th world championships being held this October in Antalya, Turkey.

In the meantime, Rose’s efforts have not gone unnoticed by her co-workers.

“One of the best compliments I received came from a nurse colleague who said I am an inspiration. I’m happy to be able to do that for someone and give them hope that they too, anyone, can live their life to the fullest,” she says. “If you have the strength, then go for it—life is too short.” •

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