TRURO, NS – The union representing some 3,000 hospital workers across Nova Scotia says confirmation today that a doctor will be leaving the QEII for a private clinic in Dartmouth is a sure sign of things to come.
Karen MacKenzie, Acute Care Spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, says, “It was just a couple of weeks ago that health authorities and the health minister himself were assuring everyone that this kind of thing would never happen. How much more wrong could they have been?”
Mackenzie, a Radiation Technologist herself, says, “My question to Health Minister Angus MacIsaac is, ‘what’s stopping all kinds of other doctors from doing the same thing?
“These are the same people who, along with the premier himself, were assuring us that these private clinics might actually help take the strain of the public system. I think what they meant to say was, they will drain the public system – of physicians and other, already overworked staff,” says MacKenzie.
She adds, “The staffing shortages in Nova Scotia’s health care system are well documented. Our union has been hounding the government on the shortage of Techs for at least three years and it has barely taken baby steps to address even that one issue.
“Now we have anesthesiologists jumping ship to go work in a private clinic. Nova Scotians should be very afraid,” adds MacKenzie.
For information:
Karen MacKenzie
CUPE Spokesperson for Acute Care
(902) 893-4321 Ext. 2286
(902) 899-0840 (Cell)
John McCracken
CUPE Communications Rep.
(902) 455-4180 (o)
