Registered nurse Rachel Kimler feels hard pressed sometimes to provide her patients at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital with the holistic care she feels they need.
Kimler, who works in the surgical units on the third and sixth floors, said it's not uncommon for the units to have inadequate staffing because a nurse has called in sick or the ward takes on extra patients in the hallways. Either means she doesn't always get the time to attend to a patient's spiritual, emotional or other needs, as well as the basic physical needs.
For example, finding five minutes to sit with a patient having an anxiety attack recently and alleviate some of her concerns was challenging, she said.
"You're constantly in crisis mode," said Kimler. "You're trying to do things faster because you've got 10 other things that you've got to get to. You're doing so much that it takes a toll on your body."
Kimler, who is also on the B.C. Nurses' Union's Pacific Rim regional executive, said the No. 1 priority for nurses in the latest round of bargaining is increasing baseline staffing levels to ensure nurses are able to provide safe, quality care.
All major public health-care worker contracts expire this year.
Nurses, whose contracts expire at the end of the month, began preliminary discussions with the Health Employers Association of B.C. in January and recently wrapped up two weeks of bargaining. More meetings are scheduled for the end of the month and in April.
Kimler said the union wants nurse-to-patient ratios instead of being staffed a certain number per unit, which is problematic because the workload changes if someone is sick or the unit is over-capacity.
"That would alleviate a lot of what I'm talking about," she said. "The acuity of patients has increased, so it's the same number of nurses caring for more and sicker patients."
In a provincewide survey last spring, a majority of BCNU members reported that normal nurse staffing levels are inadequate for the number of patients they care for in hospitals, long-term care homes and the community.
Another problem aside from not replacing nursing staff who call in sick at all is replacing them with nurses of a lesser scope because a registered nurse is unavailable, said Kimler.
Job security and hiring new nurses into full-time positions are other priorities for the union.
Michael Marchbank, president of the health employers association, said there is no additional money from the province, but the parties can find savings through efficiencies and innovations within the system and the collective agreement to address priorities.
"We've heard from the nurses that workload is a major issue," he said. "They've indicated to us that they wish to discuss it in detail. Those discussions will happen at the table."
The two parties are in the early stages of bargaining, Marchbank added.