COVID-19: N.B. nurses ‘struggling’ with physical and mental exhaustion, union says
Global News
The New Brunswick health-care system was facing staffing shortages pre-pandemic but those representing workers say the shortage is worse than ever from COVID-19.
In New Brunswick, the staffing issues facing hospitals existed before COVID-19.
However, as the global pandemic continues, those representing workers in all sectors of health care said more cracks in the foundation of the province’s health-care system are showing.
Paula Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union, said nurses are physically and mentally exhausted.
“Everybody is struggling right now,” she said in an interview Thursday.
Recently, the province’s English health authority, Horizon Health Network, put a call out on social media encouraging any registered nurses and licensed practical nurses to take shifts, if they could.
Doucet said that speaks to a sense of desperation but also a way to show the public just how much the health-care system is struggling to maintain the basics.
“I think it is also to let the public know that everything is not OK,” she said.
She said some nurses are working 24-hour shifts to maintain units and some hospitals are combining units to make the resources that are available stretch as far as possible.
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