- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor
When word of Covid19 began to spread in North America, staff and administrators at Long Term Care in Grey-Bruce began to shudder. They knew that staff were hard to attract and to keep; that short-handed shifts were already too common, and that outbreaks take even more staff time.
Here is a glimpse into how life for Personal Support Workers in Long Term Care has unfolded since early in March, through the story of just one in our community.
Before the end of March, she had to give up her other job and her small business – both of which gave her joy and peace and balance with the world outside long-term care. By April 1, a housemate left, leaving her with expenses that did not diminish – mortgage, taxes, hydro, insurance.
After more than three years on the job, she might have just broken the $20 an hour mark, but no sick days, no benefits. She is on her own for her visits to the dentist and the optometrist, for prescriptions and glasses. When the pandemic began, she accepted more shifts because she knew they needed her – colleagues were leaving due to their own vulnerability or to care for children and grandchildren whose schools and daycares were closed. And without her usual income, she needed the money.
Every day there is an ever-evolving screening process on the way in and out of work. If there is any suspicion of illness, she would be sent home as a precaution to wait it out - without pay. The first staff test for Covid 19 was not until May 9. All negative. The second was a month later. Going forward, it will be weekly, indefinitely.
Her work involves feeding, changing, walking slowly with people, brushing teeth and dentures, repositioning, toileting, listening, bathing, cajoling. All while wearing a mask.
She wants to give her residents reassurance and laughter, respite from their daily mix of frustration, pain, fear, anger. The loss of family, freedom, mobility and home are facts she cannot change.
And death. The people she knows so intimately – their favourite pajamas, their grandchildren's names, their scars, which is their good ear, what makes them laugh or frown- they die no matter how well she cares for them. Seeing people she cares for die goes with her job.
She went without a single hug for three months, for the sake of her residents. Both her sister and her brother got married in the past three months, and she could not be with them. The first of the next generation is expected in October, and she will not be able to hold her new niece or nephew. While she looks after other people's grandparents, she cannot visit her own 90 year-old grandmother.
There is no way of knowing how much longer this life of masks and precautions and isolation will continue and now, with more people returning to work and school and “normal” life, the community feels less safe to her.
On April 24 the province promised $4 an hour to “eligible staff” in health care, to encourage staff to stay on the job in an increasingly stressful workplace. Her employer was waiting to receive it from the government, so the first such pay arrived in June. Now it is ending, although absolutely nothing has changed about her working conditions – still masks 8 to 12 hours a day, still a disease that has killed other Long-Term Care staff with no cure or vaccine.
This is just one story – there are another 90,000 personal support workers in Ontario – each with their own.
We have known for decades that we were headed for a crisis in long-term care staffing, and it was already happening with or without a pandemic. It is disproportionately affecting women and so far as we can see, there is no plan whatsoever for addressing it.
