The United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) has asked the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench to issue a writ of mandamus about Extendicare in Athabasca.
“The Extendicare in Athabasca is in violation of the nursing home act, nursing home operation regulations as they do not have 24-hour registered nurse coverage at that site,” said Heather Smith, UNA president.
A writ of mandamus is an order given by a superior court to either a lower court or a government agency to perform a mandatory duty correctly.
The UNA said this is just the latest step in a long story of trying to get the nursing home to comply with the Nursing Home Act – specifically its operation regulations.
The 1985 Nursing Homes Operation Regulation seems to be rather clear on what’s expected to operate a nursing home.
“An operator shall have at least one nurse on duty at all times in his nursing home, and if at any time none of the nurses on duty are registered nurses or certified graduate nurses, the operator shall ensure that a registered nurse or certified graduate nurse is on call during that time,” states the act.
The reasoning behind this, stated Jane Sustrick, UNA first vice-president, is that some of the people in nursing homes have complex issues.
“This is all about the safety of the patients. The long-term care patients, patients in nursing homes, have complex issues very often and the reason the law was written was to ensure those patients receive safe patient care … We want to provide that safe patient care to the patient, and it’s required,” she said.
According to UNA, they’ve spoken to Extendicare Athabasca, Extendicare Canada, Alberta Health Services and the Minister of Health several times on this subject. They don’t believe they’ve received adequate responses from any of them.
“From time to time in these discussions, they’ve said they’re looking into it, but this goes back to 2012,” said Sustrick.
“We’ve asked the Minister of Health at the time to enforce this act in other nursing homes where similar cases happened and there’s a refusal, it seems, on the government’s part to enforce it.”
Although Extendicare Athabasca was unavailable for comment, Alberta Health Services stated they are “confident that the current staffing model is safe and that residents are being cared for appropriately.”
With either a lack or response or a lack of, in UNA’s mind, acceptable responses, Sustrick said they felt they had no choice but to go to the courts.
There is no doubt in Smith’s mind that the writ or mandamus should be granted.
“If they know there is an outright violation of the laws of the province, (they) will say, ‘You have an obligation to abide by the laws of the province,’” Smith said.
“The question will be, will the government comply with direction to abide by the requirements and the regulation, or will they continue to disobey or flout the regulations that currently exist?”
If the writ fails to go through, Smith plans to have a talk with their leaders to figure out their next step.
“We’d also certainly be looking at what we can undertake with advocates for long-term care in the province, in terms of seniors and other groups, and raise it to a level of understanding that perhaps we have failed to do with the public,” she added.
Smith stated that this issue is both a continuing concern and may be part of an even bigger issue.
“Our concern is that the Alberta Health Services and the Alberta government (are) turning a blind eye to this, (and) is perhaps part of a greater intent to remove even the although inadequate only requirement we have around professional nursing care for individuals in long-term care facilities,” she said.
