Year: 2007
Location: Calgary
Profile: Pat Richardson was working at Calgary Health Link in 2007 doing telephone triage. She was a member of Local 211 of UNA. Earlier in her nursing career she had worked for many years at the Salvation Army Grace Hospital and was a member of Local 47 of UNA. The Grace was phased out and closed down, and Richardson then worked at Foothills Hospital. She worked in maternity for much of her nursing career. Her union activism began during her first year of nursing when she became secretary of her local. She later became local president, and later ward representative and district secretary. For several years she served on the province-wide UNA Board. She credits UNA with ensuring Grace nurses were provided choices—jobs in other hospitals or a severance package. Richardson has had disability issues and she thanks UNA for intervening so that she was not forced out of nursing.
Richardson laments the terrible state of emergency departments in Alberta. She believes that the province needs more 24-hour urgent care centres so as to give many patients an alternative to long waits in emergency. Overwork for hospital nurses, she suggests, has caused many to feel alienated from their work.
Keywords: Calgary Health Link; Disability; Emergency departments; Foothills Hospital; Maternity nursing; Protection of nurses when hospitals close; Salvation Army Grace Hospital; Telephone triage; UNA Board; Urgent care centres.
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See also: Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta