Health care workers gathered outside the Regina General Hospital with the NDP supporters on Monday to raise the alarm on major issues in the system. Healthcare workers in the province say Saskatchewan’s medical staff is overworked and inconsistently paid.
“I’m not telling my nephews and nieces to pursue health care in this province and that’s more because of the working condition than other things, although I think our wages aren’t competitive,” CUPE 5430 vice-president Janelle Hubbard said. “Staff members are burning out. They are exhausted, they are frustrated, and they feel disrespected and ignored.”
“We don’t have extra staff,” said Linden Hall, who works at the Balcarres Integrated Care Centre. “We have people who work 24-hour and 36-hour shifts. We have registered nurses and licensed practical nurses who have to pick up care aid shifts because there are no care aids.”
If elected, the NDP plans to spend an additional $1.1 billion on health care over four years. NDP leader Carla Beck said the health care system is in a crisis and needs fixing.
“I don’t have a magic wand when it comes all of the solutions in health care, but I think there has to be a willingness of any government to sit down and have the hard conversations and be willing to hear criticism and to be accountable to results,” Beck said.
Beck described the NDP plan as focusing on “critical front-line services, implementing an aggressive strategy to keep doctors and nurses and health-care professionals working in Saskatchewan.”
While the NDP and health care workers were outside Regina General, across town the provincial government was discussing its Health Human Resources (HHR) action plan.
The government said it has invested $300 million into health care in the province since 2022 as part of its HHR action plan, including the hiring of international nurses, Health Minister Everett Hindley said.
Hindley aso said in the 24 months since implementing the program, the government has recruited 218 physicians from outside of the province and 35 physicians from outside the country.
“We do have some challenges here despite the significant improvements we’ve had with recruiting and training and hiring healthcare staff around the province,” Hindley said.
“(Solutions) don’t happen overnight. Some of the benefits of the human resource action plan, we’re not going to see for two, four, six, eight years, you name it.”