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X-Ray Tech and President of CUPE 2525 Says X-Ray Department Closure Unacceptable |
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Written by Staff
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Tuesday, 25 July 2006 |
Karen MacKenzie, President of CUPE Local 2525 and a diagnostic imaging technologist herself, says GASHA should have acted sooner and worked harder to avoid a closure of the X-Ray Department at St. Martha's Hospital in Antigonish this past weekend.
The X-Ray Department closed last weekend because there were no x-ray diagnostic services at St. Martha's Hospital in Antigonish. From 8 am Sat. morning to 8 am until Monday morning in the major hospital in the region, the public had to make their way to the hospital in Pictou for any ailments that required an x-ray.
"They are playing Russian roulette with the lives of Nova Scotians", says MacKenzie. She continues, "What if there had been a motor vehicle accident and they had to go the extra 40 minutes to the hospital in Pictou? The public deserves better service than this."
MacKenzie added that the X-Ray Department could have been kept open if the hospital had paid closer attention to organization and financing but according to MacKenzie the hospital was not willing to go that extra mile. "They are putting saving money ahead of saving people's lives. This has got to stop", said MacKenzie.
"We have been telling the Minister of Health for 5 years about the shortage in the Diagnostic Department and we have been consistently ignored." MacKenzie asks, "I want to know what steps they have been taking to solve this crisis? We haven't seen any recruitment action, and there have been no postings on health care internet sites.
CUPE NS President Danny Cavanaugh comments, "It seems as if the government wants to starve the public system of the human resources needed, then point to that very system and say it doesn't work, paving the road for private health care." That is unacceptable to the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
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