Vancouver nurse, union say concerns over drug use in hospitals politicized
A Vancouver nurse is speaking out, saying politicians are using recent accounts of concerns related to the safety of health-care workers for political gain.
Serena Eagland, a clinical nurse specialist with a decade of experience treating substance use disorders, said politicizing this issue is only creating more harm during a public health crisis.
“When we have a toxic drug supply and when thousands of British Columbians have died, it doesn’t do good for anyone,” she said.
Questions about nurse safety have dominated the legislature this month, following a leaked internal memo from Northern Health, issued last July, that suggested weapons were allowed in hospitals and drugs could be used without any recourse for nurses.
The province said the memo predated policies regarding decriminalization, and was poorly worded.
'Nurses are overworked'
Eagland said drug use in hospitals is not new. What has changed, she said, is the toxic and volatile drug supply.
“Medications that we are able to give within a medical setting don’t always meet someone’s pain needs, or their substance use needs, and so people then need to use to have those needs met,” she said.
Eagland acknowledged stories from her colleagues regarding exposure to drugs in the workplace and added the safety of health-care workers is paramount.
“People are worried and feeling unsafe and nurses are overworked, so I think it’s fair to say that those feelings are very accurate,” she said.
'There's two truths here'
Adriane Gear, the president of the BC Nurses’ Union, told CTV News that patients using substances within a health-care setting has become a concerning trend – but that the issue is complex. She said many nurses lack a culture of safety at work.
“There’s two truths here,” Gear said. “We need to address the poisoned drug crisis and we also have to keep health-care workers safe.”
Gear said some of what she’s seen in the legislature and read in the media has contributed to the politicization of what nurses are dealing with.
“I think there were some stark examples that I believe were politicized,” she said. “It doesn't make them less real, but they were politicized. I do believe that some of the reporting has been sensationalized.”
She said she worries these conversations could further stigmatize those who use substances.
“As much as this has become a problem, it’s not that it’s occurring in every hospital and every hospital room in this province, but it is occurring with increased frequency,” she said. “Nurses support harm reduction but it can’t be at the cost or at the expense of the nurses safety.”
Lack of nuance
BC United has also targeted the B.C. NDP’s decriminalization pilot project, connecting it to drug use at hospitals.
Hamish Telford, a political scientist and professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, said BC United and the Conservative Party of BC have seized on this wedge issue.
“It appears to be working with a wide swath of the public who are concerned about public drug consumption,” he said. “That drug consumption was always happening, but it was much more hidden previously, when drugs were criminalized.”
Telford added that while the parties have been successful in drumming up support, they have also ignored the nuance and complexity leading to why these issues are occurring.
“People are reducing it to very simple propositions,” he said. “Seemingly, if we recriminalize drugs, it will all go away, which of course is not going to happen.”
Eagland said she’d like to see politicians address the root causes that lead people into using substances, such as providing housing and mental health resources.
“The reality is that over 100,000 British Columbians have a substance use disorder and when they see in the media, 'Drug use doesn’t belong in the hospital,' that trust is eroded and people don’t want to seek health care,” she said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6867367.1714486964!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.