With hundreds of COVID-19 cases diagnosed among residents and staff at Saskatchewan long-term care facilities, allegations of improper safety equipment, poor air quality, and cramped living conditions, Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) president Tracy Zambory says, “It’s really a dark time in long-term care.”
The pandemic has opened the curtain on the deplorable conditions that exist within some long-term care facilities and Zambory says we can’t avoid what has been seen. It’s time to address these issues and bring about meaningful change.
“We’re going to push and push to make sure that our residents who are the most vulnerable get the care they deserve,” she says. “They deserve the best. They’re the ones who built this province.”
Statistics from the provincial government at the time of this article’s publication indicate that there have been at least 65 deaths among long-term care or personal care home residents who were infected with COVID-19 since the pandemic began in the province last March. From Oct. 14 to Dec. 30, there were 329 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed among residents or staff at long-term care homes.
Of those people who were infected, 100 were in homes operated by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), while the remainder were in homes operated by affiliates or contracted by care providers. There were also 135 cases among residents in personal care homes or privately-owned assisted living facilities and seniors’ residences.
One of the hardest hit was the privately-operated Parkside Extendicare in Regina, where almost 200 residents and staff tested positive for the virus. At the time of writing, 41 residents had died from the pandemic. The situation became so dire that the SHA had to step in to assist through a co-management agreement and requested assistance as the workforce was devastated.
SUN members who answered the call for help indicated that the living conditions within the facility were filthy and that they removed three sea cans of garbage. They also reported that personal protection equipment (PPE) was unsuitable, for example, using gloves meant for hair colouring to provide medical care.
“The people who were working there were doing the best they could, but there was no leadership,” says Zambory. “The leadership that was there was telling them that they should wear the same personal protective equipment from the start of the shift to the end of the shift. They were moving patients who tested positive into places where there were no positive patients—making the entire place positive. They had four beds to a ward, which should have been outlawed a long time ago. The oversight was horrendous.”
She added that the situation not only lead to the high number of deaths, but also impacted the lives of family members and the staff. Many of those who are recovering will be impacted by the virus for the rest of their lives. It’s vital to find out why it happened and properly address these issues.
This led SUN to call upon Premier Scott Moe to hold a public inquiry into the home to determine how this situation emerged and to put steps in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. At this point, the province has neither ruled out an inquiry nor committed to one.
“It seems that the main focus at Parkside was profit,” says Zambory. “It’s called financialized care and the residents are really the market. There wasn’t any sort of humanity involved in this at all.”
Part of the push for an inquiry is to review why the pandemic has had such a greater impact on the for-profit care home sector than the public sector. Although there have been outbreaks at public facilities, they have not been as severe as the for-profit facilities. For-profit facilities tend to have lower staffing levels, higher rates of hospitalization for residents and higher mortality rates.
Zambory says for-profit facilities are not staffed or managed by the SHA. Although the facilities may have guidelines to follow as part of their agreements with the provincial government, there are questions to be asked about how these guidelines are being monitored and adhered.
These questions have been around for quite some time and Zambory said the pandemic is shining a light on these shortcomings. For example, the Ombudsman’s Report in 2013 outlined concerns about the quality of care at the Santa Maria Senior Citizen’s Home in Regina. She says that there are recommendations from that report which still have not been implemented and it’s time to start asking why change is taking such a long time to occur.
As a former long-time nurse in the public system, Zambory says she has seen the benefits of the public sector and that it is time for the province to re-examine its role with for-profit operators. “Let’s remove the private, for-profit long-term care system in Saskatchewan and invest heavily into the publicly-funded and administered long-term care in this province where there can be some accountability. They are accountable to the public that funds them and that needs to happen.”
She adds that part of the solutions going forward should include a commitment to transparency and strong communication among all stakeholders. There needs to be better human resource management, ensuring these facilities are fully staffed with well-trained individuals. Nurses are the cornerstones in this approach since they coordinate care and serve as leaders on the team.
“We have to make sure that we are doing everything we can to ensure this situation never happens again. We have to because we know we have no other choice. As registered nurses, we have to stand and advocate for the most vulnerable in our society. We will continue to do that until things change,” says Zambory.
To learn more, visit makingthedifference.ca.
This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses.
