Northern Light
Connie Kearley is focused on workplace safety. The registered nurse works part-time in home and community care and is a casual in the ER at Kitimat General Hospital, where she began working in 2013. She is also a BCNU steward and serves as the occupational health and safety rep on BCNU’s North West region executive committee.
Kearley grew up in the Lower Mainland. She never planned on living in the North, but soon found work in Terrace after graduating from the University of Northern British Columbia’s nursing program in 2012, and now she and her family call Kitimat home.
“We have a boat, and we get on the water a lot in the summer and take advantage of the weather when it is accommodating, because in the winter, it's harsh,” she says. “But it's good. It's beautiful.”
Kearley learned about the value of unions early in her career and has been active in BCNU ever since. After calling out incidents of patient abuse and neglect, the young nurse found herself the victim of bullying and was targeted by the members of her own team who were implicated in her reports.
“I started getting hauled into meetings for trivial issues,” she recalls, and says she needed the support of a BCNU steward to help protect her from unfounded allegations against her own practice standards.
Fortunately, after moving to a different unit, Kearley flourished.
“I kind of got involved in BCNU that way, and started going to union meetings,” she says.
“[Then-BCNU North West regional council member] Sharon Sponton recruited me to the regional executive and I began serving as the professional responsibility advocate.”
Kearley has now served as her region’s occupational health and safety (OHS) rep for the past eight years. In that time, she has become a passionate OHS leader within the union and an effective safety advocate for her co-workers.
One way Kearley makes a difference is through her worksite joint occupational health and safety (JOHS) committee.
All workers in BC are protected by laws that govern the environments where they work. Both the province’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) regulations and the Workers’ Compensation Act contain legal requirements that must be met by all workplaces.
OHS regulations provide a framework for the policies and procedures employers are required to put in place to effectively protect workers from a range of hazards and reduce the risk of injury.
The health sector has some of the most dangerous workplaces, and some of the highest rates of injury. More than half of all WorkSafeBC compensation claims are made by workers in the health-care and social services sectors.
So how can employers and workers ensure compliance with the OHS regulations governing health care?
Any BC employer with 20 or more regularly employed workers must establish and maintain a JOHS committee that meets monthly. At least half of the committee members must be worker reps, and the committee must have two co-chairs, one selected by the worker reps and the other by the employer’s reps.
On a well-functioning JOHS committee, these reps work together to create and promote safe and healthy workplaces. This committee is where the job of implementing an effective health and safety program gets done.
Many JOHS committees are not as effective as they should be, and at smaller worksites the employer co-chair can often control the agenda. Kearley found this to be the case in Kitimat after joining her worksite JOHS committee in 2016.
With the support of BCNU OHS department staff, Kearley brought her concerns to WorkSafeBC. After attending a Kitimat General Hospital JOHS committee meeting, a WorkSafeBC officer wrote a series of orders that were the first step in improving the governance and functioning of the committee.
Kearley’s leadership saw her assume the worker co-chair role in 2020.
“That has been instrumental in the work I’ve been able to do with the committee,” she says of the position, and credits her union for a good part of her success. “All of the new education that has come out of the BCNU OHS department has been really empowering and I’ve been able to embody it a lot better within my role – much more so than when I first received training,” she says.
The effectiveness of the Kitimat General Hospital JOHS committee was demonstrated in 2022, after a new Northern Health Authority director of care removed the hospital’s Pinel restraints from the ER and staff requests to use them were denied.
Pinel is a hard restraint system used in many health-care settings, including long-term care, emergency, psychiatric, and intensive care. In emergency restraint, an aggressive patient can be immobilized at seven points in less than ten seconds and brought down to a single point as they calm down.
“Investigating the issue further, I found that the restraints were removed from several of our sites, including Masset (Northern Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre), the Mills Memorial Hospital med-surg unit, and Prince Rupert Regional Hospital,” says Kearley.
Two workers reported injuries to WorkSafeBC as a result of not having the appropriate restraints.”
She then learned that local management had concerns about the lack of formalized education and training being offered and had identified gaps in policy regarding hard restraint use. Kearley says these concerns were valid, but that simply removing the restraints created new safety hazards.
“Later, there was an incident, and two workers reported injuries to WorkSafeBC as a result of not having the appropriate restraints,” she reports.
Kearley brought the issue to her JOHS committee to garner the support of the other worker representatives on the committee and the employer rep to develop a local policy proposal for hard restraint use at Kitimat General Hospital and a standard of practice for Pinel restraints.
It took several long months of meetings with Northern Health Workplace Health and Safety and WorkSafeBC before Pinel restraints were again provided to the nurses there, who were supported with additional education.
Kearley says a record of staff who have received training is now kept with the restraints, and staff have been instructed to only apply the restraints if trained.
“This was a huge win that ultimately resulted in improved violence prevention policies, training and education, and tools for our nurses,” says Kearley. “The policies and training created for Kitimat General Hospital were also used as a template for our other sites,” she adds.
Kearley is grateful to the BCNU OHS staff team and her North West regional executive for their support. “My site reps have also been incredible and given me fuel to keep fighting for improved health and safety.”
Kearley’s message to other members interested in serving on their worksite JOHS committee?
“Get involved, use your voice, ask questions and take the education that’s offered,” she advises. “And when you're comfortable and you get an opportunity, take a JOHS committee worker co-chair role if you can.”
She reminds members that they can always lean on their BCNU regional OHS rep and BCNU health and safety officers on BCNU staff.
“They have been instrumental in supporting me in my work,” she says.
Today, Kearley reports that all NHA worksites are getting Pinel training and newly developed education is being delivered. She notes that security staff at several sites are also trained in Pinel application, in addition to health-care staff.
“It was a slow burn, but we have changed the landscape.”
UPDATE (Winter 2024)