Nurses deliver 10,000 petitions to Island Health

Ten thousand people have signed petitions demanding Island Health stop replacing nurses with care aides.

Adriane Gear, Co-Chair of the BC Nurses' Union's South Islands Region will be presenting the signatures to Island Health's board meeting Wednesday morning. Her key message to the board is that safe patient care is being abandoned to cut costs. Gear points to Nanaimo and the many troubling examples of the new care model, which, after being implemented in October, is failing.

"We're already seeing evidence of how this new system is failing patients in Nanaimo," says Gear. "Nurse-to-patient ratios have doubled and tripled. They're being pulled away from bedside care to perform more non-nursing duties, such as delivering bodies to the morgue at night. Patients are waiting hours to be assessed and receive their medications."

Last Friday, several hundred nurses from Vancouver Island and the lower mainland protested outside Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. It is next on the list for the new care model, along with Victoria General Hospital. 122 nurses are being replaced by care aides at both hospitals in January.