GASPE
©Jean-Philippe Thibault – Gaspésie News
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Méganne Perry Mélançon, Sandra Étienne and Jenny Tardif.
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The Gaspé hospital laboratory team has shrunk to a trickle in one year. Both the union and MP Méganne Perry Mélançon fear an imminent breakdown in service.
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Currently, only 6 medical technologists remain out of the 14 that the department recently had. The other 8 are on sick leave or have simply decided to reorient their careers. “The overtime imposed and the lack of resources push our members to exhaustion. We’ve been close to a breakdown in service for months. The situation is very serious and untenable,” says Jenny Tardif, herself a medical technologist and now the national representative for Gaspésie and the Îles-de-la-Madeleine for the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la health and social services (APTS).
Incidentally, several employees have had to go into overdrive in recent weeks to avoid the worst. The assistant head at the Gaspé laboratory, Julie Joncas, recently had to work between 95 and 98 hours every two weeks. She also had to postpone her four weeks of vacation indefinitely despite her 29 years of experience in the network, in addition to swapping her day shift for the evening shift, chaining compulsory overtime. “We are very little known. We work in the shadows and people don’t know us. It takes a promotion of our profession; it’s essential,” she says.
©Jean-Philippe Thibault – Gaspésie News
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The assistant head at the Gaspé laboratory, Julie Joncas.
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Medical laboratories are open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. They are particularly essential for the departments of surgery, emergency, intensive care, obstetrics and orthopedics. “If we lose one more, there will be a shortage of people to cover the workload. It would be extremely serious for the people of Gaspé. The staff is very exhausted morally and physically, ”adds Julie Joncas.
Recognition of the profession
This promotion of the profession is at the heart of the demands of the APTS, which took advantage of a public outing on Friday to directly challenge the Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé.
According to the union, the fault of the lack of manpower lies in particular with the Optilab reform, which aimed to centralize laboratory analyzes in certain establishments. The APTS is of the opinion that following this initiative, many medical technologists were told that interesting analyzes would be carried out in other regions, leading to a change of profession for some or outright loss of interest for others.
In Gaspésie, the hospitals of Maria, Chandler, Sainte-Anne-des-Monts and Gaspé, as well as the CLSCs of Paspébiac, Grande-Vallée and Murdochville have their server laboratory at the Rimouski regional hospital. Currently, specialized analyzes are directed there, while those called routine (for example for the thyroid gland, anemia or blood sugar) are done in local laboratories. Technologists must, among other things, take samples, prepare them for testing and analyze samples. They also ensure the precision and accuracy of the results to allow physicians to make an accurate diagnosis.
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The players in the field hope at the same time to repatriate all the analyzes to the Gaspé. The CISSS de la Gaspésie had also expressed this wish again in 2020 to resume full governance of its medical laboratories, explaining that the situation was demobilizing the technicians of the network.
“Since this Optilab announcement, there have been fewer CEGEP registrations in Biomedical Analysis Technology and fewer graduates […] What was announced in 2016 discouraged the next generation and devalued our profession. Biomedical analyzes are associated with 85% of health diagnoses. The sooner we have them, the faster the doctor can make a diagnosis. If nothing is done by the government, we are heading straight for disaster,” said Sandra Etienne, vice-president of the APTS. Especially since five or six retirements are planned in Grande-Vallée, Murdochville, Gaspé and Chandler within a five-year horizon.
Recruitment Question
Eleven CEGEPs offer the program, some of which could pass due to the lack of registrations. According to figures provided by the union, only five graduates left the Cégep de Rimouski school benches in 2022, including two who have already left the region. The next cohort is still waiting for the green light to start, due to a lack of students.
In order to remedy the situation, it is suggested to include training in Biomedical Analysis Technology among the Perspective Québec scholarships which offer up to $9,000 for a three-year program or with the scholarships from the Ministère de Health and Social Services, the sums of which can go up to $30,000.
“We do not understand that it is not on the list of training given the urgent need”, summarizes the deputy Méganne Perry Mélançon, who asks Christian Dubé to intervene directly.
On the side of the CISSS du Bas-Saint-Laurent, we have been saying that we have been “very concerned” for 3 or 4 months in the laboratories of the Gaspé hospital because of absences due to illness and also of positions that we have not been able to to fill in. “This phenomenon of labor shortage is however observable everywhere in Quebec, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Services. There is a lack of new workers, so recruitment is very difficult, especially in so-called remote regions. For the moment, we do not know of any discoveries due to the collaboration of our employees, but we had to reorganize the working hours, sometimes modify the tasks and we have set up a night guard system, “explains by email. the media relations advisor, Gilles Turmel. A succession plan is also in place with the other Gaspésie facilities (Chandler, Maria and Sainte-Anne-des-Monts) and can be used as needed.
The blame is not directed towards the Rimouski establishment, but rather towards the top of the decision-making pyramid of the province. “We have a very good collaboration with the CISSS du Bas-Saint-Laurent, which takes the situation seriously, but the solutions are beyond us. It is the ministry that must look into this issue, do its homework and take corrective action,” adds Jenny Tardif.
Recently, the president and CEO of the CISSS de la Gaspésie, Martin Pelletier, for his part assured that no break in service would take place this summer in the health network, despite some apprehended slowdowns. A statement that raised eyebrows at the APTS. “I would say to the CEO that between theory and practice, there is a good margin,” concludes Jenny Tardif.
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