SUN worried about new provincial command for COVID

The head of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses isn’t sure a “provincial command centre” is what the government should be worried about right now.

On Thursday morning, Premier Scott Moe announced that provincial command was being activated to streamline the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

SUN president Tracy Zambory said a few hours later the government is trying to figure out how to shuffle around human resources when it should be concentrating on finding more resources.

“I’m not sure how the standing up of another new thing here with this command centre, I’m not sure how it is that they’re going to be able to manage this when there’s just a finite amount of human resources to get the job done,” said Zambory.

The union president described the situation, saying it’s the worst it has ever been and that health-care workers are at a critical breaking point.

“You know when the premier starts off by saying that we’re doing OK (and) we’re doing fine — we’re not. We’re absolutely not. The system (and) people are being crushed,” explained Zambory.

She didn’t like that there was almost no discussion from the premier about any measures outside of the immediate announcement, like the measures and gathering limits the nurses and doctors have been calling for to blunt the force of the fourth wave.

Having listened to the announcement, Zambory said it’s very troubling that there didn’t seem to be answers to important questions like how the change might affect those on the front lines.

“It’s the front lines who are actually keeping the whole system going. Without the front lines, the whole thing would collapse,” said Zambory.

She admits that, with something like this, the “devil is in the details.”

“We have a lot of concerns about who, actually, is going to be in charge of health care in this province now. (The Saskatchewan Health Authority) now doesn’t seem to have the full decision-making authority to plan and operationalize like they did before with the pandemic,” said Zambory.

She said the authority had been looking at the pandemic through a medical and evidence-based lens, whereas it seemed like the change would make things militarized, where employees would be considered inventory.

“When they talk about it where it has worked in other times where there have been disasters in the province or provincial emergencies, the structure worked extremely well — well, they’re talking about weather events and fires, which is a whole lot different than trying to run a health system,” said Zambory.

Ultimately, Zambory said SUN will be watching closely how this plays out. She said registered nurses will continue to show up to do the job, like they always do, but she warned that it’s getting harder to do so.

In the weekly town hall meeting for Saskatchewan doctors on Thursday evening, Dr. Susan Shaw — the chief medical officer with the SHA — briefly addressed the announcement.

She said the health authority hadn’t been consulted before the announcement though it did get a heads-up before the news conference began.

Shaw commended the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, saying that it has a lot of experience and depth of knowledge and that it has been very involved in support during the pandemic already. But Shaw also said she still had a lot of questions.

“I don’t have an answer on the technicalities of how this is going to work,” Shaw said to the online audience of doctors and health-care professionals.

Shaw did say she had a meeting to talk about the change on Friday.

She said the direction from the SHA’s Emergency Operations Command is to keep doing what health-care professionals are doing and continue the leadership within the SHA.

Shaw also told the town hall that, from what she knows, the change wasn’t about the SHA’s response to the pandemic or the Emergency Command Centre’s team.