I always wondered if we had like a $200 deductible at the ER which will be waived if your complaint was legit would weed out the time wasters and make them go to Urgent care or a walk in clinic.

you'd probably need a very clear dileneation of what is legit and isn't, could be a slippery slope that I don't think the triage nurse would want to make a call on. can you imagine saying you're gonna need to pay $200 or something, they'd need to be behind bulletproof glass :lol

what they could do is what some places did during the pandemic is open up urgent care next to the ER to handle the overflow of "non-emergencies" and let the ER address actual emergencies.

No. That's just going to get people who might think they're not "sick enough" to stay home because they'd be afraid they're going to get charged that $200.

Meanwhile by the time they're sick enough enough they're forced to go they're whatever disease is affecting them has progressed far too long to be properly treated or cured (and treatment will probably cost taxpayers more than if it was caught early)

Plus no doctor would ever a tell a patient they shouldn't see them if they're concerned about something, and I bet the number of doctors that would say "yep you're fine, $200 please" would be a whole zero.

And two doctors might not make the same conclusion. My father in law's throat cancer was mis-diagnosed by his regular family doctor for nearly a year as some "flu" and sent him away. He finally went to a walk in clinic and they ordered up some tests, and bam Stage 3 diagnosis.

So, just wondering, with the recent announcement for an immigration clampdown and the deportation of over a million temp workers next year, who is the far right going to target next as the boogeyman? They’ve gone after Asians during COVID, Muslims since 9/11, and LGBT/gay people every day. Who’s left?

Woke white people on bikes.

:awwyeah:

We need to review the limitations being put on who can become a doctor here. Both for students and for immigrants who are already certified in another country. A friend of mine from highschool went to uni and supposedly didn't have high enough grades to be selected for med school here. He moved to Germany where he went to med school and is now an ER doctor there.

The kicker was part of their med program has students do exchanges to hospitals in other countries to diversify their learning. He went to Quebec for 3 months and worked in an ER there. So as a German he's fine to be a doctor here but apparently not as a Canadian.

You guys heard about the recent stabbing of the nurse student at VGH.

What's more fucking insane about that whole thing is that the patient who stabbed the nurse was suffering from alcohol withdraw, and as such, the doctor certified the patient, meaning that even while charged for the assault, the patient gets to remain in the same hospital, and often times cared by the same people they assaulted.

That's fucking insane when you think about it. The fact that Ken Sim can hire 100 new police officers, but for whatever reason can't assign a few of those officers to the hospital to assist with these types of assaults is an absolute travesty. Why in the hell is security guard Balpreet expected to handle these regular occurrences (take a guess, they don't either). Why are nurses expected to physically search patients before admission? Why are there mandates not allowing dangerous items/belonging to be taken away while in the hospital? The news never reports on the weekly assaults that happen by these drug addicted psychopaths that attack nurses with impunity, and are allowed to remain in the hospital because some dickhead doctor said so. In fact the only time these guys get kicked out is when they assault an actual doctor.

No wonder nurses get burnt out, and leave the industry entirely. These are fundamental flaws in our system that require correcting if we're ever going to retain staffing and encourage more folks to enter the profession.

If it happens on the weekly, why is THIS case so special? I only read global news article on it and the only quotes in there came from the nurses union...... FYI it's time to negotiate the next collective agreement in 2025.

I'm not sure exactly, when a patient breaks the jaw of a nurse, I guess it's not as sexy?

A student nurse getting stabbed finally made the local outlets finally talk about the issue, which I found surprising, as this has been going on for a long time now.

They were just until recently letting people smoke crack in their beds, assault seems mild

I learned about that assault from my daily news feed too, but I didn't understand what the nurse's union prez meant when she was quoted to say "the safety policies weren't getting enforced".


Personally, I would vouch for a policy where if the patient assaults a healthcare staff in any way, they'll fxxking get their a$$es kicked out of the hospital and not receive treatment. If you want to get treated, you show a little respect to the healthcare staff. Otherwise, you can GTFO and rot until you die.

But of course, a policy like that will never fly.

The problem is we don't have enough spots in school. I knew some people from Nanaimo who could not get in here so went to the Caribbean to get medical degrees and now work in Chicago. Lots of South Asians do that. The new med school the NDP and SFU have opened will help solve that problem.

Weapons are uncommon. It's usually "just" assault.
Yeah Ken sim hires 100 officers but they probably just patrolling around his house so someone doesn't spray paint his garage again.

You can walk into nursing school here.

My wife had two colleagues both basically decide they wanted to become nurses overnight and both got into the 2 year expedited program almost immediately.

Transferable credentials to Canada are a huge barrier to recruiting people.

You need 48 relevant university credits or an undergrad to get into the 2 year accelerated nursing program.
Unless you are talking about the LPN program, which is 2 years to begin with.
So it's pretty easy to get into if you have a degree already or 3 years in something else semi relevant in university, but for someone to get in that doesn't have post secondary education, you aren't going to just walk in to a university and be an RN in 2 years.

Well yea so receptionists etc. can mostly walk into these programs with a basic degree or diploma

I was talking about being a doctor. The fact people can get into nursing programs so easy but we still have a huge shortage shows we have a shortage of people/workers.

No.. we do a piss poor job of creating an environment people want to work in.

See the aforementioned comments.

to clarify a few things:

1. Patients are NOT allowed to use drugs while in hospital (we kick them out for doing so). I can't speak to other hospitals but I assume there are similar policies in place.

2. Nurses are reminded to search patient belongings and document everything found. This is for liability purposes but also for safety reasons. We have had incidents where individuals have come in with weapons and it was because their belongings were not thoroughly searched. Do I think nurses should be in charge of this? No, but in the interest of everyone's safety, it has to happen and someone's gotta do it.

3. Anyone who assaults a healthcare worker doesn't just get off scott free. We recently had an incident involving an young individual who decided to throw fists and kicks. He's being charged. The most enraging thing about situations like this is the nurse's union will ask the nurse "but what could YOU have done better in this scenario?". Like, ok, fuck right off with that bullshit lol geez.

4. I would absolutely love to see officers have permanent postings inside of Emergency. Will it ever happen? More than likely no. Certain patients know they can get away with toxic behaviour and mostly get away with it. Whenever police DO get involved (when we call them) those patients almost always immediately shut the fuck up and start behaving/start acting like the victim. They know the system, they know what buttons to push to get what they want. Even having security guards standing by does NOT prevent certain individuals from choosing violence. Some people really need that officer standing there with a gun and handcuffs to know when it's time to behave.

5. Anecdotal, but RCMP officers have told us that we in ER see more instances of violence than they do on a normal shift. From my own experience, this isn't surprising. So when we're talking about staffing places like this, would you want to work here? how about your gf/wife? Violence is just the end game for many patients. Prior to that it's insults, racism, spitting, throwing feces, and whatever else they can think of doing when they get upset.

How do you get people to want to do a job though? Compensation. As said if people don't want to do it, it's not cause there aren't enough humans, it's cause too many other career paths where you don't get spit on are more attractive.

My sister has her masters in nursing, worked at St.Pauls, then Surrey memorial, then Jim Pattinson cancer agency, now she’s shifted into full time teaching. Because it’s a shit environment and with two young kids she isn’t into dealing with issues all the time.

Remember Covid? Yea.. all this same shit was happening when we talked about it then, and surprise surprise, nothing has changed.

And that's why turnover is high. Some thrive in stressful environments, others cope by finding jobs that are more chill (usually things like Post Anaesthetic Care/Surgical Day Care/Maternity etc). The rest simply quit nursing altogether. Recent years have seen a lot of nurses move to Urgent Care centres as that job is a lot more chill in comparison.

The ones who can handle places like ER thrive even more due to the endless amount of OT shifts available. There is of course anti-fatigue policies in place to prevent people from working too much but when they're desperate....

That being said, they are more often than not, short handed on the wards.

So keep increasing the number of spots and do whatever research is needed to allow people to transfer their education. If they're good enough to go through that hassle to get degrees and can work in Chicago then it should be set up for them to easily work here.

Everything being mentioned here is why the proposed public/private partnership would have forced the hand of the govt. to create a better environment.

But in typical Union fashion, the nurses union would rather drag their membership through the mud VS be open to anything that could even possibly take a single member away.