Island Nurse Practioner Issue Not Resolved

From the Chronicle Herald

Nurse practitioner likely out of a job

By BRIAN MEDEL Yarmouth Bureau
Fri. Nov 27 - 4:46 AM


A group of about 60 residents of Digby Neck protest outside Province House in Halifax last month. They are upset over the recent dismissal of a nurse practitioner in their area. (Peter Parsons / Staff)





It now looks like a nurse practitioner on Long Island, Digby County, who was let go last month won’t be getting her job back soon.

And that doesn’t sit well with most folks.

Some say nurse practitioner Karen Snider was fired after she made public comments about the need for a full-time office clerk in a health clinic on the island.

And if she wants her job back, the local health authority wants her to recant by signing a letter that would possibly include an apology to be presented to the public, said Warden Jim Thurber of the Municipality of the District of Digby.

He is also the councillor for the district the clinic serves.

Ms. Snider was employed by the South West Nova district health authority.

Before the health authority would even discuss other conditions of her return, it requested "that she make a public statement which, in my opinion . . . would have made it look like she was the reason for . . . her dismissal," Mr. Thurber said Thursday.

"I guess that would be what would be insinuated from the statement she would have been required to make.

"It appears to us that the district health authority has no flexibility and we’ve been let down.

"We have a perfectly capable health practitioner who’s going to leave Nova Scotia (and) we don’t feel a proper replacement is going to come in.

"She was liked by the people. The people felt they were being properly looked after. The clinic was working better than it’s worked since it was established there.

The problem may have originated when the nurse practitioner commented locally in a community newsletter about how a clinic receptionist-clerk should be given full-time hours because more than 20 patients a day were often being seen.

"So the nurse practitioner made the case . . . (for) full-time funding by going directly to the public to argue for good health care for the islands," Andy Moir of the Islands health liaison committee said in an earlier interview.

The hours that the part-time office receptionist worked were never cut back, said an authority spokesman.

"They were temporarily increased to full time while they were implementing a new computer system and once that was done successfully, they put the clerical person back to her regular hours," said Fraser Mooney.

He said nurse practitioners are hard to recruit for places like Digby Neck.

"We’re not about to dismiss a nurse practitioner who has apparently been embraced by the community just because she spoke out or hurt our feelings," said Mr. Mooney.

"We would expect that there would be a lot more issues of concern that would lead to someone’s dismissal," he said, without going into detail.

The employer has been talking with the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union about the case, which has not been resolved, said Mr. Mooney.

The health authority said earlier that care provided by the nurse practitioner was never an issue.

On Saturday, the community will get together to decide on how to proceed, said Mr. Thurber.

Health Department officials said they cannot intervene, he said.

"We’ve still got hope that someone there can give us the right resolution to this."

He said he wanted to invite the health minister, the deputy minister and the premier to Saturday’s meeting.

"I’m sure the community . . . isn’t going to let this just disappear. They’re going to regroup and probably come back stronger than ever."

Health Minister Maureen MacDonald said Thursday she is aware the community is concerned, but the matter is an employer-employee issue.

( bmedel@herald.ca)