EDMONTON — Yesterday, an important new report was released by the Parkland Institute entitled, “Undervalued and Overstretched: Inequity, Discrimination, and the Crisis Facing Alberta’s Allied Health-Care Workforce.” It outlines the conditions driving widespread burnout and retention issues among Alberta’s health care workers.
As per the report, an alarming 35% of allied health care workers — including lab technologists, counsellors, paramedics, and more — “often think about quitting their jobs,” reporting high rates of stress and discrimination at work.
“The finding that so many of our valuable health care workers are considering leaving is extremely concerning news, but should frankly come as no surprise given all they’ve been through over the past few years,” says Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “We continue to hear from Albertans all across the province that they’re struggling to access the health care they need. And we know that this is the result of the chronic short staffing crisis throughout our health care system.”
Allied health care workers make up a third of our health care workforce, their work is essential to the care that Albertans depend on every day. But instead of listening to workers and taking the urgently needed action to recruit and retain staff, the Alberta government has focused its efforts on seemingly endless restructuring and privatization schemes.
“A hospital bed is just a bed without the full team of qualified health care professionals to staff it,” says Gallaway. “But this government’s continued disregard and blatant disrespect for the critical work and dedication of these workers is driving more and more of them out of the province and out of the system altogether, ultimately compromising patient care.”
The report identifies the Alberta government’s ongoing privatization efforts and the repeated disruption due to the continual restructuring of the system as a major driver of burnout, uncertainty and stress among workers.
“The provincial government continues to make empty promises to Albertans, stoking chaos while providing absolutely no evidence to back up all of the major changes they're making to our health care system,” says Gallaway. “The fact is, we know exactly what we need to do to improve health care in Alberta, health care workers have been telling us for years. We need to start listening to them and finally staff our public health care properly.”
“This report validates what Friends of Medicare, health care workers, their associations and other health care advocates have long been saying: we urgently need a change of course to get health care back on track and to ensure that Albertans are getting the high quality, timely public health care that we need and deserve. And that starts with a real workforce plan, and making the long overdue changes to the way we treat health care workers in this province,” concludes Gallaway.
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