Year: 2005
Location: Calgary
Profile: Larry Connell’s long nursing career has included stints in industrial nursing, corrections, and orthopaedic nursing. Connell graduated from a British Columbia school of nursing and was an early member of the BC Nurses Union. He and his wife, Barbara, came to Alberta in 1984. When he worked in corrections, Connell was a member of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. But he joined the UNA picket line in 1988 with Barbara. As a corrections nurse, one of Connell’s roles was determining if a prisoner can work and if so what work they are physically capable of doing. He publicly challenged Ralph Klein’s plan to consider establishing prison chain gangs in Alberta. Connell observed that if the government chose to do that, nurses would have to defy any effort to make them help choose members of chain gangs since putting people in chains to work violated international human rights law and nurses’ code of ethics.
As an orthopaedic nurse, Connell, as he told a legislature committee, helped “grandmas and grandpas, some my own age, improve their quality of life with new hips and knees.” Connell denounces private hospitals doing hip replacements and other privatizations as threats to universal healthcare.
Keywords: BC Nurses Union; Chain gangs; Corrections nursing; Human rights; Industrial nursing; Men in nursing; Nurses’ code of ethics; Orthopaedic nursing; Privatization; Ralph Klein.
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See also: Alberta Union of Provincial Employees; Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta