Quebec nurses union wary of nursing assistants being asked to do job of orderlies

Quebec's long-term care facilities are facing a chronic shortage of orderlies, so one private health group has come up with a temporary solution — to replace the orderlies with nursing assistants.

The Arbec health care group operates six care facilities in the Montérégie, Laurentides and Montreal region, and brought in nursing assistants to take on duties that would normally be done by orderlies.

Benoit Valiquette, general manager of Groupe Santé Arbec, said that the system has meant better quality care for patients.

"Approximately 50 per cent of their task is nursing. Usually, a nursing assistant has 32 to 35 patients. But in our facilities they only have 17 patients, so they are able to give medications and give assistance care like baths."

Nursing assistants, like orderlies, attend to patients' basic needs like bathing, dressing and meals. Nursing assistants, however, are able to take on more medical responsibilities like monitoring IV bags, cleaning a catheter or administering certain medications.

The change proved an expensive one, with an assistant nurse's salary being about 40 per cent higher than an orderly's.

Gabrielle Côté, a nursing assistant who works for the Arbec health group, told Radio-Canada that she likes the new role.

"What's good about this is when we combine our tasks, we get a better understanding of how the patient is doing," she said.

"Having fewer patients, we have more time to devote to their needs."

Union concerns

The nurses union (FIQ-P), representing health care workers in the private sector, says it doesn't want to see the two jobs consolidated.

It's worried the quality of service for patients will decrease and that the two roles will be devalued.

"If we ask nursing assistants to split its tasks with the orderlies' tasks, it automatically means some clinical duties will not be done by the end of the day," said Sonia Mancier, FIQ-P president.

Mancier said she sees a lack of full-time employment opportunities for nursing assistants which might lead them to accept duties that aren't part of their normal job descriptions.

For its part, the Arbec group says it wants to eventually go back to using orderlies when more staffing is available.

"We want to go back to the original planning. Not all the nursing assistants want to stay in that kind of job. So that's why we'll have to go back. Probably not before two or three years," said Valiquette.

Editor's note: The president of this company is related to a member of our editorial staff who was not involved in this story.