adventures in disaster

Do you think I'm that stupid?

Being a Canadian is sometimes painful and embarrassing. Watching the Liberal leadership convention was a cringe fest. Dorky, socially retarded white guys mumbling about a "new" liberal party blah, blah bullshit.
The liberals robbed us. They brazenly stole millions of dollars and they actually believe if they throw up a new leader we will forget what a disaster they were.
The federal liberal party was the worst example of graft we have ever experienced and I refuse to vote for them again. It is doubly insulting that Bob Rae is running. That bastard ruined more nursing careers than SARS. He arrogantly assumed that because he had tons of money to fall back on all the nurses did too. They went years without a contract and worse had to give back any gains they had made in the past. Nurses and teachers were the whipping boys of the NDP government.
The public was told we were service workers..Doing everything we do out of love.
This has been the bullshit nurses have had to live with for years.
People assume because we clean puke and poop we must be saintly creatures. We aren't. We are highly skilled, highly educated professionals that care for well and sick people. The Florence Nightingale myth has always been bull and I am sick of it.
I want to be treated like a professional. Professionals get paid for their services. You don't want to pay that's your problem but you will pay for that choice . Imagine a hospital with no nursing staff. I hope you have a big family willing to care for you twenty four seven. I hope they have a clear understanding of critical care medicine.
The public likes to make a grandiose statement about how valuable nurses are but when we ask to get paid what we are worth we get cursed out by that raging asshole George Smitherman, a complete joke of a human being.
George Smitherman and Bob Rae are prime examples of why no nurse would ever vote Liberal. George announced to a meeting of nurses that we were whiners, waiting for a Brinks truck every morning He used obscenities when describing nursing requesting a new contract.
We have been without a contract for almost a year and the arbitrator shows no signs of getting to work.
When our contract goes to arbitration we have no choice but to accept it. All our flimsy benefits could be stripped and we would be helpless. Nurses are forbidden by law to strike or impose any job action. We can work to rule but without a contract what rules are there?
We are being constantly harassed about being sick. One sick day and we have to produce a note from the doctor and report to Occupational health . It's harassment.
Nurses make less than municipal workers. Your garbage man makes way more than me. Is that right?
Don't I have the right to fair pay? Or is it because the majority of nurses are women and it's discrimination on a huge scale?. I think it's because we are women fighting a Hospital Association filled with old, white men. These guys have been arrogant asshole doctors for years and there is no way in hell they will ever recognize nurses as professionals.
To think of us as equals whose work may be different but equally important and necessary makes this bunch laugh in derision.
In fifteen years the majority of all nurses working in Canada will have hit retirement age. Most nurses are taking early retirement. Meaning in ten years we could lose twenty five percent of all nursing. It has become obvious that no one really wants to be a nurse and enrollment is down severely, worse we can't find qualified instructors as most have retired or moved into management.
So, very few new nurses and hell who can blame them? Four years of University and a starting wage of twenty dollars an hour and a lifetime of shift work. Who can live on that and pay back thousands of dollars in loans? The housekeeping staff makes more than a first year nurse.

How can we make nursing a palatable career when you will never make enough to ever own your own home? Never get to buy a new car? Hell, you have to get married and double your income to enjoy any of the benefits of incredibly hard work.
Sometimes I think the public only cares about nursing when they become patients and then only to complain constantly about how they didn't get what they wanted the very second they demanded it. They refuse to acknowledge that the workload is unmanageable and in their selfishness they would rather complain then work to help make the hospital a safer place by adding more nursing staff.
If your hospital experience was trying call your government and demand change.
Demand more nurses.
If nurses didn't have to care for five or six patients at a time you would get better care. If some patients didn't hog the complete attention of the nurse through selfishness and obnoxiousness the other patients would get some quality time too.

All I can say is support nursing, one day it might be you that needs your puke or poop cleaned up and wouldn't it be nice if someone was there to help?
Wouldn't be nice to wake up after open heart surgery and have an incredibly well trained nurse there to manage your recovery? Or would you rather have someone who never got past grade ten and took a two week course?
Your choice, your future.


Please check out the Tanzania fundraising link. It is World AIDS day today..Give a few bucks so this smart kid can go and help out with this epidemic. Come on guys..give a little or at least tell a friend or add a link.

I have become ambivalent about the AIDS situation. I think it is because it has been so many years ago that I witnessed the awful death of an AIDS patient. Now, in the Western world AIDS has become a chronic illness. Patients are sick sometimes but can get better, they live longer and their quality of life has improved. I think we have settled into a kind of awful complacency here.
In Africa the ambivalence is terrifying. They have no excuse. Their AIDS patients still die horribly, treatment is difficult and rare.In Africa an entire generation has been disappeared. Those in their twenties and thirties have died, leaving their children orphans.
When the crack epidemic was at it's height grandparents in the thousands were raising their grandchildren...Africa is the same. Worse because the stigma is so awful some children are abandoned completely creating a generation of child parents. Ten year olds caring for their siblings...finding work so they can feed them, clothe them.
I cannot wrap my head around this. I can only sit in shock. Maybe that is what is wrong, the problem is so damn huge, so overwhelming you can't find a handle for it.
The loss of an entire work force decimates the local economy. The children are at the mercy of whoever walks by. Boys are abducted and forced to become soldiers..cannon fodder for wars they know nothing about. Girl children are forced into prostitution to avoid starving.
The AIDS pandemic is the entire worlds problem. Every lost life reflects on the world..like that butterflys wings. Who knows who we have lost? The child that would have grown up and found the cure for AIDS?
Support anyone who wants to help. Give a little of what you have. You wont miss that mocha latte grand whatever the hell I promise.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 10:16 PM