Date: 2021
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Tim Bouwsema, RPN, graduated from MacEwan University as a registered psychiatric nurse in 2005. He worked briefly at the Misericordia, then joined University of Alberta Hospital, where the Progressive Conservative government announced a planned shutdown in 2009. Bouwsema joined rallies and educational events that UNA and AUPE organized to show public opposition to the shutdown. The success of that campaign demonstrated to Bouwsema what healthcare workers and the public can achieve when they work together, and the crucial role played by union staff in coordinating events. Bouwsema later joined the University of Alberta Hospital as a member of the Emergency Mental Health Team in the Emergency Department. He has experienced the stresses of the COVID period, including the hospitals’ initial chaotic messaging and rule-changing. He notes that only UNA pressures persuaded AHS to provide protective N95s masks early in the pandemic. By mid-2021, he notes, nurses faced exhaustion from pandemic demands. Bouwsema also comments on what he has learned from studying the history of UNA about the struggles that were required to win nurses wages, working conditions, and professional responsibility clauses that he might otherwise have assumed had been agreed to as commonsensical by management.
Keywords: Alberta Hospital; COVID; Emergency Mental Health Team; MacEwan psychiatric nursing program; Protective masks; Psychiatric nursing; UNA history; University of Alberta Hospital.
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See also: Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta