Ontario, Canada (NursingSalary.Org) – A clinical nurse specialist of palliative care at the Sudbury hospice in Canada says that residential hospice staffs caring for dying patients need to spend time on caring for their families and patients, instead of fund-raising in the mere hope of making the ends meet.
Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) supported Paul-Andre Gauthier’s please for higher base funding budgets to be awarded to residential hospices. Earlier this month, pleas to Queen’s Park were made on the yearly Day at Queen’s Park held on behalf of RNAO.
Gauthier is a nursing professor working in College Boreal. He requested Deb Matthews, Health Minister, for consideration on 80% funds at hospices, especially those like Maison Vale Inco Hospice. Demands that this point be raised in the upcoming provincial budget were made.
Although funding is now given for nurses’ salaries and wages for support workers at Ontario’s hospices, this money is frequently insufficient for cost coverage according to Leo Therrien. Therrien is an executive director at Maison Vale Inco Hospice.
Registered Nurses Association of Ontario
The Effect: Sudbury ended up having to raise an extra $640,000 last year even after receiving $700,000 from province funds.
Demands of 80% funding by the ministry have been made by Hospice Association of Ontario. This is in the context of a $1,600,000 annual expense for the running of any residential hospice housing 10 beds, like Sudbury’s one.
Ministry spokesman, Andrew Morrison, released that ministry is currently funding $580,000 at a hospice of 10 beds.
Due to the funding strategy, personal support staff and registered nurses working at hospices are paid lower wages than in hospitals. This naturally attracts lower quality of work and less dedicated nurse candidates to state hospices.
That only makes retention and recruitment of healthcare experts harder at end-of-life hospices similar to Therrien’s. According to Therrien, the point of concern is fairness in wages. This would only be feasible with eighty percent base funding.
Therrien also said that a terminal strategy has not been put into effect at the province. One such strategy is, however, under the wraps.
Shouldn't hospice nurses spend their time caring for their patients instead of fundraising?
Nonsense! That’s what Gauthier had to say about staff members’ needs to worry concerning the accumulation of thousands in dollars. What they really should be concerned about is provision of care for those that need it, i.e. their duties.
He also said that hospice workers must be paid wages that are comparable with healthcare professionals working in hospitals. Also being advisor at Maison Vale Inco Hospice, Gauthier says that he wants to ensure that the Health Minister is aware of the urgent need in hospices for core funding. This was hopefully made clear enough during RNAO’s meeting with Matthews at Queen’s Park.
Gauthier is one of the regional representatives at northeastern Ontario – Region 11 for RNAO.
