The day coincides with Orange Shirt Day, an annual event that came to be through the fierce determination of Phyllis Webstad, a residential school Survivor, whose prized orange shirt was taken from her at school, and has become a powerful symbol for the attempted stripping of Indigenous rights and personhood. Phyllis is the founder of the Orange Shirt Society, an organization dedicated to building awareness of the individual, family and community inter-generational impact of Indian Residential Schools and to promoting the concept of Every Child Matters.  

In 2021, almost one-quarter of a million Indigenous people called Manitoba home, making up 18.1% of the population, and more than 102,000 indigenous individuals live in Winnipeg. It is up to all of us to learn about the origins of the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation, and to strive for a more just, empathetic and compassionate society that champions Indigenous rights.

We have compiled a list of helpful learning resources as well as events taking place this week leading up to the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation next week:

Participate and learn:

• University of Alberta’s Indigenous Canada course: 
  Indigenous Canada | University of Alberta (free, online; 12+ hours)
• 4 Seasons of Reconciliation (free, online; 3-4 hours)
• Orange Shirt Society: Programs – Orange Shirt Society
• “Remembering the Children: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation” September 30 on Parliament Hill (90 minutes)
• Truth and Reconciliation Week 2024: National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is offering a week of learning and reflection, including webinars such as the “Health Related Impacts of the Residential Schools System,” to help us move toward reconciliation.
  

Read:

• 21 Things to Know About the Indian Act – Bob Joseph
• Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality – Bob Joseph
• The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America – Thomas King
• True Reconciliation: How to be a Force for Change – Jodi Wilson-Raybould
• Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls – Jessica McDiarmid

Visit:

• Agowiidiwinan Centre at The Forks in Winnipeg – Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba

• September 28 to 30: Orange Shirt Days @ the Manitoba Museum – Manitoba Museum (all-day programming focused in partnership with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.)

• Canadian Museum for Human Rights: The Witness Blanket: large‐scale art installation made from hundreds of items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings and other cultural structures across Canada.

• WAG Qaumajuq: Three-storey glass vault is filled with thousands of Inuit carvings; free to view in the gallery lobby.

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September 24, 2024 | Winnipeg, MB – Staff at the Aboriginal Health & Wellness Centre (AHWC), represented by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP), have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate after more than two years without a new collective agreement. The last contract expired in April 2022.

More than 50 MAHCP members at AHWC work in 25 specialized health care and social service disciplines including as nurses, counsellors, community health workers, teacher’s assistants and many more. They serve Indigenous patients and clients in more than a dozen program areas, including through a recently launched mobile primary-care clinic. In July 2024, the Manitoba Government announced a partnership with AHWC to establish “Canada’s first Indigenous-led supervised consumption site.”

“The dedicated staff at Aboriginal Health & Wellness Centre have waited too long for a contract that acknowledges their value,” said MAHCP President Jason Linklater. “The next contract must address the huge and growing wage gap between AHWC staff and their public health-care system colleagues. It is already way overdue.”

MAHCP’s Bargaining Committee called for a strike vote last week after nearly a year of negotiations. The strike vote was held from Tuesday to Friday, September 17-20, with 94% voting in favour of a strike mandate. No strike deadline has been set.

The last contract between MAHCP and AHWC, effective 2018-2022, provided Pallister-era wage freezes and meagre annual increases of 0%, 0%, 0.75% and 1%.

“Most wages at AHWC have increased less than 2% since 2018 while inflation has spiked over 20%. Many staff currently earn half or less of what their peers at other hospitals, clinics and agencies are making,” said Linklater. “The overwhelming strike mandate shows they will no longer accept this glaring inequity.”

The majority of funding for AHWC comes from a combination of federal and provincial government sources.

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The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals is a union representing more 7,000 allied health professionals. Our specialized members work in more than 45 professions throughout Manitoba in labs, clinics, hospitals, long-term care and community.
For more information about MAHCP, visit www.mahcp.ca.

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That’s the wrong direction, but it’s not surprising given the lack of fundamental change frontline health care professionals have seen.

On behalf of our 7,000 specialized members, MAHCP is calling on our provincial government to staff up in critical allied health areas to help free up beds and relieve the bottlenecks driving up ER wait times.

“Unfortunately, Manitoba is still short of critical allied health professionals, and we risk losing more of them due to burnout, increased workloads, and wages and benefits that have fallen behind,” said MAHCP President Jason Linklater.

We’re recommending:

• more diagnostic professionals to perform tests and scans shown to have the greatest impact on reducing ER wait times;
• more physiotherapists and occupational therapists to help free up beds by making sure patients get back on their feet and return home safely, or to keep patients safe at home in the first place and avoid trips to the emergency room;
• more social workers to make sure patients can be discharged safely with the supports and resources they need; and,
• more resources in the community, including home care case coordinators.

Since their election last fall, our government has announced important health care initiatives such as expanding hospital discharge to evenings and weekends, and adding more hospital and transitional care beds. Unfortunately, these initiatives won’t succeed – and ER wait times will remain unacceptably high – without increased retention and recruitment of allied health professionals.

“MAHCP is eager for a staffing update to find out how many critical positions have been added and filled to support the expanded discharge schedule and additional transitional beds. We’re asking for a comprehensive and transparent staffing plan to ensure Manitoba is retaining, training and recruiting the specialized allied health professionals necessary to fix the ER crisis.”

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Hosted by Honourable Matt Wiebe, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, this 90-minute session invited representatives from the labour movement to continue the discussion on Manitoba’s social challenges, with the goal to generate recommendations to mitigate risks to workers and members of the public.

During the event, we discussed possible solutions to workplace violence; gender-based violence; retail crime; mental health challenges and addictions; lack of affordable housing and homelessness. Thank you to our inspiring tablemates from UFCW Local 832, CUPE Manitoba, Manitoba Teachers Society and Canadian Labour Congress – Congrès du travail du Canada for a great discussion.

At the close of the Premier’s summit in the spring, Minister Wiebe committed to releasing a public safety strategy early in the fall. MAHCP looks forward to seeing commitments in the strategy to address escalating violence and improve personal safety in Manitoba’s health-care facilities.

As a fellow participant stated during the roundtable: “We approached our discussion today from the perspective that desperate people do desperate things. We need to improve access to support and resources to address the root causes of crime and rising violence. We can only do that by increasing funding to frontline agencies and accepting as taxpayers that there will be costs to that investment.”

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Supervised consumption sites typically include a reception area, consumption spaces and post-consumption common areas. Staff are trained to respond to accidental overdoses and other emergencies and can refer to and support patrons in accessing health and social services. 

Read the safer consumption site announcement.

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“MAHCP takes every opportunity we can to meet with our Premier and other government representatives to talk about critical allied health retention and recruitment challenges. We’re calling on our government for a health human resources strategy that aligns with the work of other Canadian jurisdictions. We’re seeking expanded education and training for allied health, and we’re asking for essential improvements to the Healthcare Employee Benefit (HEB) plan. Without significant investments in the professionals who deliver high-quality patient care, Manitoba’s health-care system isn’t sustainable.”

Manitoba has been losing health-care professionals to other jurisdictions and employers aren’t filling vacant positions quickly enough. In a recent MAHCP membership survey, two-thirds of allied health professionals told us they’ve seriously considered leaving their job in the last year. More than one-quarter of respondents (28%) say they’ve even considered leaving the healthcare sector altogether, putting our clinics, labs, hospitals, community and long-term care settings at risk.

“We have to stop the bleeding. We we will only be able to improve retention and recruitment when Manitoba’s government and health-care employers collaborate to improve workplace culture, address critical vacancies, and enhance wages and benefits.”

What are allied health professionals’ top workplace concerns? According to our May 2024 MAHCP membership survey:

• ‘increased workload’ (61%)
• ‘unfilled vacancies’ (48%)
• ‘not feeling valued’ (39%)
• ‘low morale’ (38%)

“We also know that those who provide health care to Manitobans do not have a health benefits plan that looks after them appropriately. This is a barrier to recruitment and retention.”

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Their mission is to work with families under a certain income level to ensure their children can access dental services, from regular check-ups and cleanings, to more intensive work like extractions, restorations and even interceptive orthodontics.

“No matter the scope of work we do during the visit, the family’s fee will depend on a variety of factors like total income, government benefits they may be receiving, number of children, etc. And the convenience of being located in a school is that if a patient from the community cancels a scheduled appointment or doesn’t show up, we can go into the student population and fill the appointment with a child in need of dental care.”

Their small oral health team gets quite a lot done, teaching school children how to brush and floss properly and conducting cavity screenings. They track cavity rates in some schools in the Winnipeg School Division, and they focus on addressing the needs of high-rate schools – those in which they’ve identified cavities in 15% or more of students.

According to Linda, there are many significant scientific studies pointing to the connection between good oral hygiene and overall health, and poor oral health can even be dangerous. The mouth is the first stop in the gastrointestinal system, which means it’s the initial collector of bacteria found in food and from other items that kids may put in their mouths, like soothers, toys, fingers, etc.

Researchers have also found links between periodontal disease and risk for pre-term, low-birth weight-babies, as well as connections to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

S.M.I.L.E plus provides important knowledge to patients all over the city, in schools and daycares, and to parents through community groups like Healthy Start. In addition to operating the Monday to Friday dental clinic, the team delivers presentations to teach new parents about the importance of oral health and how to minimize risks, so they can pass on the knowledge to their kids.

In addition, every three months, they visit 44 preschool/daycare facilities to apply a fluoride varnish on the teeth of more than 1,000 children. The varnish protects against the effects of improper brushing, sugary drinks, being put to bed with a bottle, or simply having the bacteria that cause cavities. For 20 years, Linda has been going directly into homes to perform this varnishing service, working mostly with low-income families, Indigenous people and newcomers.

“This is public health dentistry and much of the work we do is preventive,” says Linda, who was nominated in 2018 by a colleague for The Canadian Dental Hygienists Association Superhero Award for the origins of the varnish program and her ongoing commitment to community.

“Many of us don’t realize just how difficult it is for a low-income, uninsured family to access dental care. Recently, with rising costs due to inflation, combined with things like unexpected job loss or benefits termination, we’ve been seeing children whose parents never thought they would need to access a service like ours. There is no judgment when you enter our clinic. We want to help make sure all children have healthy mouths, so we are working to secure pedodontics dentists (children’s dentists) to work in our program so we can increase community appointment availability.”

Linda plans to spend her retirement years enjoying cottage life in Belair, while continuing to advocate for access to pediatric dental care across Manitoba’s health regions.

 “S.M.I.L.E. plus is an important training ground for senior-level dental and dental hygiene students. We’re making a real difference to children’s health and an unhealthy mouth can lead to significant costs to the health-care system down the line. I would love to see this program expanded to help people throughout Manitoba, not just in Winnipeg. We know there are great needs for care everywhere and we do it cost-effectively and professionally.”

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s S.M.I.L.E. plus team of dentists, dental hygienists and assistants works with senior dentistry students from the University of Manitoba, Faculty of Dentistry and School of Dental Hygiene to deliver services, including:

• Oral health needs assessments
• School and community-based oral health promotion
• Dental pit and fissure sealant treatment
• Topical fluoride treatment
• Assertive follow-up for children in need of treatment
• School-based clinical treatment

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – JUNE 26, 2024

TREATY 1, WINNIPEG — Two in three (65%) allied health professionals working in Manitoba’s public health-care system have seriously considered leaving their job in the past year, according to a recent member survey by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP). This finding is significantly higher than the 54% of health-care workers who said they had been thinking of leaving their job when surveyed by Deloitte during the pandemic. 

“These alarming survey results, fresh from the frontlines, show that systemic challenges persist within Manitoba’s health care system, and the situation is not improving fast enough to provide some relief,” said MAHCP President Jason Linklater. “Our members have been handling growing workloads with dwindling staffing and resources for years, and it is unfortunately not surprising that so many are considering leaving if they don’t get additional resources soon. Manitoba is at risk of losing more specialized health-care professionals.”

The survey of public-sector allied health professionals, conducted in early May 2024, revealed that 28 per cent of those who said they had been thinking about leaving their job are considering leaving health care altogether. The survey also revealed:

• 90% say workload has ‘greatly increased’ (55%) or ‘somewhat increased’ (35%) or compared to five years ago. The main reason: the volume of work has grown, but staffing has not (73%).
• Half (49%) say employee morale is ‘much worse’ and a further 29% say it is ‘somewhat worse’ than five years ago.
• 60% say quality of service is ‘somewhat worse’ (36%) or ‘much worse’ (24%) compared to five years ago.
• When asked for their perspectives on top issues affecting their workplace, respondents said: ‘increased workload’ (61%), ‘unfilled vacancies’ (48%), ‘not feeling valued’ (39%) and ‘low morale’ (38%).
• 79% say they are ‘somewhat valued ‘(41%) or ‘highly valued’ (28%) by their patients, but only 30% say they are ‘somewhat valued’ (23%) or ‘highly valued’ (7%) by their management/employer.
• Only 30% say their employer provides them with sufficient resources to do their job well.
• The two thirds of respondents who are considering leaving their job identified ‘work stress affecting well-being’ (56%), ‘workload’ (48%), ‘do not feel valued/respected’ (47%) and ‘inadequate staffing’ (45%) as the most common reasons.
• 17% are eligible to retire in the next four years.

“Once they’re gone, specialized health-care professionals are not easy to replace,” said Linklater. “The frontline is saying loud and clear that immediate action is needed to retain them.”  

View the report of results.

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The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals is a union representing more than 7,000 allied health professionals in Manitoba’s public health-care system, and the only union in the province dedicated solely to supporting allied health professionals. Our members work in 45 specialized disciplines within prevention, emergency response, assessment & diagnostics, rehabilitation & recovery, and they are critical members of multi-disciplinary teams in hospital and labs, clinics, long-term care and community settings. www.mahcp.ca

For all media requests/interviews:

Karen Viveiros, Communications
431-323-7499

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“There are only two of us in the province actually, myself and Dr, Marshall Wilkinson, and we both work out of HSC, so I would definitely call us a tiny, understaffed team,” laughs Kristine. “Another city hospital has been wanting to use neuromonitoring for certain high-risk cardiac surgeries for over a decade, but we don’t have nearly enough staff to cover two centres.”

Kristine started her post-secondary journey by completing a Bachelor’s degree in Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan, and then decided to pursue the two-year diploma in Electroneurophysiology at BCIT in Vancouver.

“When you complete this program, you can become an electroencephalography technologist who performs EEGs (brain scans) to assess for seizure disorders like epilepsy; you can specialize in performing sleep studies, or you can work in a nerve conduction clinic to diagnose degenerative and peripheral nerve disorders. Once I found out I could combine all of these different tests together and work in an operating room, I chose that path.”

Kristine has been at HSC for eight years working as part of a multi-disciplinary team supporting neurosurgeons and orthopaedic spine surgeons. She also completed a two-year program in Intraoperative Neurophysiological Monitoring through the Michener Institute concurrent with her on-the-job training.

“While they’re under anaesthesia, patients obviously can’t express things like abnormal sensations or weakness, so it’s our role to monitor the body systems during surgery and sort of act as the patient’s voice while they sleep.”

Kristine consults directly with surgeons in advance to collect information about the patient, their diagnosis and the surgical plan, then places electrodes on the patient’s body to enable her to monitor motor and sensory function. She then reads the ‘squiggly lines’ on the computer screen throughout the surgery. If there is a change in the patient’s function, she alerts the surgeon, who can often reverse the last surgical maneuver before permanent damage occurs.

“It’s amazing how many things are plugged in and connected to a patient during an operation. It’s very crowded in an OR with all the equipment and monitoring going on, from EKG and ventilation to neurophysiological. Any time there is a concern, the entire team – surgical, anesthesia, nursing and neuromonitoring – works together to make sure the patient is stable and safe.”

The IOM team assists in a wide spectrum of surgeries with the majority being spinal, and also including brainstem and cranial nerve surgeries, brain tumor resections and neurovascular procedures.

“The reality is that it can be anywhere from really boring to really stressful, depending on the surgery, but even uneventful operations require continuous monitoring. We can’t bounce back and forth between ORs to accommodate multiple surgeries, because a patient’s situation can change at any moment.”

Example day in the life of a neuromonitorist: Brain tumor resection

6:45 AM – Feed cat
7:15 AM – Arrive at work
7:30 AM – Conversation with surgeon and anesthesiologist regarding patient’s clinical status, tumor location, anatomy at risk, anesthetic considerations, and plans for neuromonitoring.
8:00 AM – Apply electrodes to anesthetized patient.
8:45 AM – Leave OR; inhale a coffee during surgical exposure.
9:15 AM – Back to OR; stare at squiggly lines; try to look relaxed so surgeon doesn’t get worried.
10:00 AM – Assist surgeon in creating a ‘map’ of eloquent brain areas so nothing functional is resected.
10:15 AM to ? – Continue monitoring squiggly lines and updating ‘brain map’ as resection continues. Alert OR team if anything changes and work together to reverse the change.
End of surgery (could be any time) – Remove electrodes and clean equipment.
After work – Go home; eat dinner; relax; feed cat again; bed.

Typically, Kristine and Marshall each have one OR booked per day, with surgeries often scheduled for the entire day.

“Once the surgery begins, we aren’t able to leave for lunch breaks, or even bathroom breaks, unless someone takes over monitoring. With our current staffing shortage, this means we’re often in the OR for many hours without relief, and sometimes, surgeries can go unexpectedly late due to unforeseen circumstances. If we have to stay late into the night to finish a surgery, we still have to be back bright and early the next morning to start another case because there is nobody to cover the scheduled ORs.”

According to Kristine, sometimes a surgery may go ahead without neuromonitoring if the physician feels the risks of delaying it until a neuromonitorist is available outweigh the risks of proceeding without neuromonitoring. Unfortunately, sometimes, surgeries have to be bumped because of a lack of staffing, and that’s disappointing to Kristine.

“This is obviously never what we want. We want patients scheduled for surgery to undergo their procedure in a timely fashion, and for the procedure to happen in the safest way possible and leading to the best possible outcomes. It’s frustrating for the whole team knowing that surgeries are happening without neuromonitoring because the patient isn’t able to wait for our schedule to have an opening.”

Kristine loves her job but she’s concerned. This year, the Government of Manitoba announced it would increase the number of spinal surgeries by 50 per cent, but that will be difficult without adding to the IOM Technologists team. Ideally, with the planned increase in spine slates, HSC would have six neuromonitorists, which would mean they could support all surgeries and have appropriate back-up coverage.

“There’s no doubt we work hard here in Manitoba. In other jurisdictions, neuromonitorists earn better wages and often have a lesser level of responsibility. At HSC, with our current staffing situation, each neuromonitorist must be an expert, solely responsible and able to run their own OR from beginning to end. Two technologists have been recruited to join our team in the past year and they each only lasted weeks before leaving for other opportunities in other jurisdictions.”

Outside of work, Kristine loves animals and gives of her time to Manitoba Mutts Dog Rescue. She fosters cats, attends adoption fairs, supports those who adopt and raises funds to help the rescue. She loves to cook, finds peace in her garden and spends most of her vacation time visiting family and friends scattered all across Canada.

“I have a lot of really positive things in my life and work is definitely one of them. I would just like to see some investments in our team so we can support the spinal surgery expansion and make sure that all surgical patients get the best care they deserve.”

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