Date: 2021
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Helen Pulido was born in the Philippines where she studied nursing. After years of unsteady nursing work in the Middle East, she came to Canada as a Temporary Foreign Worker live-in caregiver in Red Deer in 2000. Despite roadblocks to recognition of foreign-trained nurses, she won recognition as an RN in 2004 and become a permanent Canadian resident. She then worked for years in the Edmonton General Hospital Dialysis Unit before joining ICU at the University of Alberta Hospital. Eventually she became a supervisor at the Youville Home, a long-term care facility. Though a UNA member all along, she first became an activist after being elected president of the small Youville local. Her UNA work empowered her to stand up to physicians in ways she once deemed impossible. Her next position was transition coordinator assessing patients for discharge at Villa Caritas, an acute geriatric facility where she later became a unit manager. At one point during the COVID outbreak she worked in northern Alberta, experiencing extreme understaffing and patient defiance of pandemic masking rules. Pulido objects to notions of non-essential services within the healthcare system, such as contracting out laundry services, leading to patients being charged for the service.
Keywords: Dialysis; Edmonton General Hospital; ICU; Long-term care; Philippines; Privatization; Transition coordinator; Understaffing of nurses; University of Alberta Hospital; Villa Caritas.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; Systemic Racism in Alberta; Temporary Foreign Workers in Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta