Watch above: If you know a registered nurse who practices in Saskatchewan, there’s a good chance they’ve considered quitting their job … “if” new survey results are an accurate portrayal. Meaghan Craig explains.

SASKATOON – If you know a registered nurse who practices in the province, there’s a good chance they’ve considered quitting their job. Some startling statistics are being released from a poll conducted on behalf of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) from Feb. 7 to March 9 of this year.

According to SUN officials, 800 registered nurses who are members of the union took part in the annual survey from all parts of the province. The survey found one in four registered nurses has seriously considered leaving the profession in the last 12 months.

“One of the members that I spoke to recently who has been a member for 40 years has told me that she hasn’t seen anything like this in her entire career,” said SUN President Tracy Zambory.

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“The entire system where she works is in chaos.” Tweet This

Of those surveyed, workload and staffing levels were cited as the top two reasons for wanting to quit.

“This isn’t about them just being unhappy at work, this is about them seeing that their professional practice is really being put at risk and what we see then is that translates into patient care being unintentionally being put at risk and that is not what the patients and the families of this province deserve,” remarked Zambory.

Three in four registered nurses say they are aware of times patients have been put at risk due to short-staffing.

“I think it’s really critical that we start talking about the staffing levels in long-term care,” explained Zambory.

“We have members telling us that they are looking have one registered nurse to 30 residents, all the way up to one registered nurse to 150 residents. This is not acceptable.” Tweet This

Gaylene Molnar, Saskatoon Health Region director of nursing professional practice and education, admitted to being a little surprised by how many registered nurses had considering quitting in the last year as reflected in the poll.

“Overcapacity has been an issue that we’ve been working with in our region for quite some time now so anything that we can do to help manage the numbers of patients that we have in our facilities will make a difference in morale and capacity and our nurses have been tried looking after so many patients,” said Molnar.

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The health region says safety and quality of care is something it takes very seriously.

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In February, a 14-day challenge was launched to improve patient flow after emergency department staff in the region saw a prolonged spike in patient demand. The work involved 4,800 staff and physicians who voiced nearly 500 ways to influence and improve patient flow and it worked in reducing overcapacity.

The next step was launching a 90-cycle with a continued focus on patient flow, which is now one-third complete.

“For the last while we’ve been reviewing our care processes and the roles that we have in region and trying to make them better and improve for our patients and their families as well as for our staff,” explained Molnar.

“That work has been around looking at how providers provide care to their patients as well as how they work together as team members.”

Team is key said Molnar so long as that the team is functioning team and they understand each others roles and how they work together.

SUN officials say the solution is multifaceted, front-line workers need to be part of meaningful discussions before decisions are made within regions, registered nurses are replaced with registered nurses and at a level that is safe for patients.