Nurses Protest Changes To Patient Care

VIHA has chosen Friday the 13th to implement its new "care delivery model redesign" or CDMR at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.

Nurses have sounded the alarm about CDMR but it has fallen on deaf ears. VIHA is moving to full CDMR in four units at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital today, replacing 26 RN and LPN positions with care aides. VIHA has also given notice it will replace an unspecified number of nurses with care aides at Royal Jubilee Hospital (12 units) and at Victoria General Hospital (11 units), starting January 2014.

The net effect will be an increase in the number of patients each professional nurse oversees and will diminish the time available for assessment, monitoring and administering of medications. With each nurse responsible for twelve patients under CDMR, core nursing functions are likely to receive inadequate attention, resulting in:

• Frequent, sometimes lengthy, delays in administering medications, including insulins, increasing the risk of missed medications and complications;
• Failure to complete daily head-to-toe patient assessments (including post-surgical) and increasing the likelihood of missing signs of deterioration;
• Inability to respond promptly to patient call bells and bed alarms (used for disoriented patients) due to scarcity of available nursing staff;
• Inadequate charting of patient conditions due to lack of time for individual monitoring and assessment, increasing the risk of failure to rescue.

Quotes:

"Timely observation and rapid intervention are the keys to preventing negative outcomes in care and both are hampered under a scheme like CDMR," says BCNU President Debra McPherson. "Nurses are dismayed that VIHA is rushing into a scheme that will undermine safe patient care."

"It's clearly impossible for a single nurse to oversee a care team serving twelve patients while meeting professional standards," says BCNU Pacific Rim Chair Jo Salken. "Why is VIHA rushing to implement a flawed care-model that puts saving money ahead of patient safety?"

"If nurses are unable to assess patients within at most one hour of surgery, signs of things going wrong are bound to be missed," says Salken. "CDMR is going to disable the hospital's early detection system, multiplying lapses in patient safety and increasing the risk of failure to rescue."

"The literature is quite clear that having more, not fewer, professional nurses is strongly associated with greater patient safety and better health outcomes," says McPherson. "Cutting back on bedside nursing is far too risky to barrel ahead as VIHA is doing - we're dealing with patient's lives here, not widgets."

For more information, contact:
Catherine Pope, Communications Officer 604-313-7412
David Cubberley, Campaigns Officer 604-992-9226