What would it take for some nurses to return to N.L.’s health-care system? One says respect
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Stacey Button, a licenced practical nurse (LPN) who left her job in rural Newfoundland more than two years ago, says nurses in the province want three things: respect, better compensation and more flexibility.
Without those, she said, nurses like herself will keep leaving the province — and in some cases, the profession altogether — to meet their needs elsewhere.
Button left her job as an LPN at Green Bay Health Centre in Springdale after a patient assaulted her in 2022, she said, adding she didn’t receive much support from her managers.
“That person stayed in the hospital for many, many weeks after that had happened,” Button told CBC News, referring to the patient. “I had to leave. I couldn’t stay at a workplace that would allow that to happen to me and then not help me after it happened.”
Button changed tack when a travel nurse came into the hospital and “just made an offer I couldn’t refuse, really,” she said.
Travel nursing in Nunavut
Button currently lives in Heart’s Delight with her husband, but she works as a travel nurse for the Government of Nunavut, in a clinic located in Coral Harbour where working conditions are much better for health-care professionals, she said.
“If someone comes into the health-care centre and they are rude to the staff or treat the staff in an unkind way, management has no issues stepping up and stepping in,” Button said.
Button works as a travel nurse for a clinic in Coral Harbour, Nunavut. (Submitted by Stacey Button)
In Newfoundland and Labrador, she said, it’s often on the nurse to calm irate patients or their family members down.
“That really shouldn’t be,” Button said.
She said she also enjoys her scope of practice in Nunavut, and when she is back in Heart’s Delight she can be fully present in her home life.
“I can’t imagine there would be anything that would bring me back here to work … with the way things are,” Button said. “I can’t imagine that I would ever want to give this up.”
‘I wanted to come back’
Button’s flexibility as a travel nurse is what Angie Regular, a former LPN living in Springdale, wants.
In 2023, Regular said she asked for a leave of absence from the Green Bay Health Centre because she couldn’t get child care for her young daughter.
“She’s now four. I had asked for a leave of absence for up to a year until she was old enough to get into a daycare,” she said.
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Regular said the health authority denied her request, so, like Button, she initially took up travel nursing so she could work when her parents could watch her daughter.
She’s since moved on to a different industry, but wants to return to the hospital.
“I absolutely love nursing. I love working with other people. I love helping. Every part of nursing, I love it. I love the challenge. I love going into my shift, and sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to come through those doors,” Regular said.
Both Stacey Button and Angie Regular worked as LPNs at Green Bay Health Centre in Springdale. (Colleen Connors/CBC)
Regular wants to work casually, but said she’s having trouble getting shifts at the hospital in Springdale.
In an email, NLHS spokesperson Mikaela Etchegary said “LPNs hired as employees through N.L. Health Services have the flexibility to work in various arrangements including temporary call-in, part-time, and full-time based on employment availability.”
WATCH | ‘I wanted to come back a year after once my little one got in daycare’:
This travel nurse wants to work in the N.L. system — but says there are obstacles
Stacey Button said she wants to work in central Newfoundland, and is willing to work as a casual nurse within Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services. But as the CBC’s Jenna Head reports, Button said there are other issues that need to be addressed, too.
But Regular said that would require being on call 24/7, which doesn’t work for her.
“I was here all summer in Springdale, willing to work and wanting to work, and I felt like I was being denied,” Regular said.
“It really hurts. I spent 10 years here in Springdale and I wanted to come back after a year, once my little one got in daycare.”
Regular said recruiters are currently offering her travel nursing positions in western Newfoundland. She said if she could work casually in Springdale, she’d return to nursing immediately.
“It’s a great career. It’s very, very rewarding. I loved everything about it, and I hope one day I can go back,” she said.
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