Another administrative backlog

A few weeks ago, we discussed a backlog causing delayed housing construction, which could be eliminated with more employees working behind the scenes. It looks like everyone needs staff right now, but can we plug another hole in the dam?

Health Minister Michelle Thompson said Thursday that the province needs an additional 1,200 nurses. Janet Hazelton, president of the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union said in the release that "Nurses need non-nursing work such as administrative tasks and other duties removed from their practice in emergency, and elsewhere. Nurses need to focus on timely and precise patient care, she said. The plan does not mention covering these non-clinical tasks for nurses."

With the amount of new, New Scotlanders enriching our shores, we should be focusing on smoothing out our support structure for critical, growth-centric, areas. We are the fastest-growing region by almost all accounts, and we will continue to be for the foreseeable future. In order to sustain our growth period without descending into chaos, we need to flush out our ranks within the support structure of a few key areas. To me, housing and healthcare are the top priority and we can fill the spots we need with relative ease.

For a long time, Nurses have had duties shuttled on to them that take away from their core job competencies. We can expand our nurse's efficiency just by assigning their non-essential tasks to non-Nurse staff. Let's hire more non-nurse clerical staff and assign Nurse-specific tasks to Nurses.

Patrick O'Neal.