UNA Public Awareness Rally & Information Pickett outside Pomeroy Hotel on March 12, 2023. Photo by Erika Rolling.

By Erika Rolling

Healthcare

United Nurses of Alberta hold rally against proposed structure overhaul of AHS

Mar 12, 2024 | 11:06 AM

Tuesday morning commuters on the 100 Street and 116 Avenue intersection in Grande Prairie may have noticed a crowd waving flags and getting honks in support.

The United Nurses of Alberta held a Public Awareness Rally & Information Picket for an hour, for the provincial governments proposed restructuring of Alberta Health Services into four tiers.

UNA First Vice-President Danielle Larivee was on site and spoke with EverythingGP.

She says healthcare in Alberta, is in a critical state.

“Obviously, all across Northern Alberta, there’s service disruptions all the time. People who need healthcare cannot get it in their community the way that they deserve.”

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“That’s an emergency and it deserves attention now. And instead, we have Adriana LaGrange focused on changing the org chart of Alberta Health. It just seems the wrong focus at a time when we need critical focus on the fact that nurses and doctors are working overtime, they’re working short, just trying to literally hold the pieces of the health care system together by their fingernails and they are getting stretched and they aren’t doing well.”

Larivee was a NDP MLA from 2015-2019 representing the Lesser Slave Lake riding, and a former public health nurse.

She says nurses today are facing burnout and hears of people wanting to leave the profession.

“What you hear is ‘it’s time to change the org chart’ and you know that is not our priority. In fact we were very concerned that will create instability at a time when we need people laser focused on solutions instead of worrying about who should be making the decisions.”

North District Vice-Chair of UNA, Margaret Nasedkin says the problem with the restructuring changes is that they’re “illogical”.

“There’s no vision to show that it’s going to improve anything except that they’ve broken it into four pieces.”

Nasedkin says the province has been “tone deaf” on the issue and that “healthcare staff has been saying there’s a problem and they’re not listening.”

The UNA says they predict months of “organizational chaos and inertia as leaders at all levels of the system figure out their new roles and to whom they are accountable” if the restructuring happens.

The trade union will also experience “decisional paralysis and an inability to make positive changes in the system” like in past reorganizations of Alberta’s healthcare system.

Larivee notes “clearly this is not just a normal bump, this is an urgent crisis that needs the attention.”

SEE MORE: Restructuring of AHS must be done “responsibly and carefully” says AMA president