To be clear I worked as a nurse’s aide (PSW here in Ontario), so within the “nursing” department. I just quit that job with no notice today.
A PSW’s job is one of the hardest jobs I know of and really destroys your mental and physical health. On top of that, my workplace was expecting me to be reception (portable phones after the receptionist went home because CEO didn’t want to pay them past 6 pm), be a defacto nurse handing out medication and doing wound care, be a food server, housekeeper, maintenance worker, counsellor(despite having zero extra time with our task lists we were expected to cater to a resident’s need to unload for as long as it took but not get paid overtime for that) and tech support.
What really bothered me was that the nurses refused to help the PSWs when we were short staffed because our work was “beneath” them and I referred to that as an old fashioned and ineffective hierarchy that effects resident care in an email.
When I outlined these issues in said email the union rep fired back by telling me this was how it was done in every retirement home in the area and that she didn’t realize I “had so little compassion for the residents concerns”.
I hate this field and they wonder why the Canadian health care system is failing….