Tories still ignoring outside advice, at all our peril

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/04/2022 (1065 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In February, representatives of the Manitoba Nurses Union met with Dr. Peter MacDonald, the chair of the province’s surgical and diagnostic recovery task force to discuss strategies to alleviate an enormous backlog of procedures. The timing could not have been better.

The task force had only been created in December and had made little progress. And it only made sense that the task force brainstorm with the MNU; a serious and apparently growing shortage of nurses had the potential to cripple any catch-up plan.

According to MNU President Darlene Jackson, the meeting was generally positive and many different ideas were discussed. However, in the nearly two months since that one and only meeting, Jackson said it doesn’t appear that anyone was really listening to the nurses.

Last week, the task force announced it is forging ahead with a plan to ramp up priority elective surgeries during the summer months. Although neither MacDonald nor Health Minister Audrey Gordon explained the full implications of that plan, the MNU confirmed later that government officials have warned nurses the summer surge in surgical slates would likely require the cancellation of planned vacations.

Jackson said she and MNU officials had cautioned MacDonald in February about any plan that required nurses to cancel vacations. After more than two years on the front line of the pandemic, during which time vacations were limited, nurses desperately need a chance to rest, Jackson said.

The MNU proposed several ideas to alleviate the need to cancel vacations: increased use of operating room technicians or licensed practical nurses (LPNs) to reduce the number of registered nurses needed for each procedure; the extension of existing OR shifts into evening hours rather than scheduling entirely new surgical slates.

Unfortunately, none of those ideas found their way into the task force update. As it stands now, Jackson said the task force plan could very well make a bad nurses shortage even worse.

“We told them to be careful because for a lot of our nurses, retirement is a real option,” Jackson said. “If they started cancelling vacations, we’re afraid that a lot of nurses will just say, ‘That’s it. We’re done.’”

A request to speak to MacDonald to get his impression of the meeting with the MNU was, not surprisingly, ignored. As a result, Manitobans can only speculate about why the task force — and the government that created it — continue to plod ahead with its plan while ignoring the input of groups outside government.

All we know for sure is that ignoring the input of everyone and anyone outside government is standard operating practice for Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government.

Throughout the pandemic, the PC government has made it a habit to ignore outside advice, and rely instead on internal subject matter experts. That approach would be entirely acceptable if — and this is the big ‘if’ — relying solely on internal advice produced positive outcomes.

Unfortunately, ignoring outside advice frequently resulted in tragic outcomes.

When health care professionals asked the province to lock everyone down to mitigate a new wave of COVID-19, the province plowed ahead with the removal of social and economic restrictions and watched as the body count rose.

After having habitually ignored outside advice when it comes to the broad strokes of the pandemic response, it only makes sense the Tories could continue to ignore the input of doctors, nurses and scientific experts when it comes to strategies to reduce the surgical and diagnostic procedures backlog.

The nurses are hardly the only voice trying to help government.

For months, Doctors Manitoba, the main bargaining group for physicians in the province, has been proposing ideas on how to deal with the backlogs. Some of those ideas, such as increased use of operating room technicians or LPNs to reduce reliance on RNs in operating rooms, are identical to those proposed by nurses. So, if nothing else, there is consistency among those outside voices.

Unfortunately, there has also been consistency in the response by government.

The PC government’s vaunted restructuring of Winnipeg hospitals — the centrepiece of its 2016 pledge to fix health care — has struggled because of an inability to find enough nurses to fully staff the three, larger emergency departments that were at the core of its plan. In that instance, as well, the province refused to work with the MNU and other nursing unions in advance of the restructuring.

Why has the Tory government been so obstinate about applying that outside advice?

This is a government that does not have a good relationship with unions of any type. The botched efforts to freeze public sector wages, and interference in contract talks between the University of Manitoba and its faculty, are evidence of the disdain with which the Tory government views its bargaining groups.

And, in fairness, Manitoba is hardly the only province that has turned a deaf ear to external input.

From British Columbia to Saskatchewan and Ontario, front-line health care staff and their representatives have complained about being ignored by government when it comes to planning the pandemic response and efforts to address backlogs.

Government has tried to come up with solutions on their own, and failed in spectacular fashion. It really has nothing to lose by bringing those external voices closer to the decision-making table.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com