Alberta nurses gain broader PTSD protections following years of advocacy

As a result of a landmark agreement reached in collective bargaining with the Alberta provincial cabinet, nurses in the province suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related mental health injuries will now be automatically eligible for workplace compensation.After years of advocacy by front-line workers, the United Nurses of Alberta recently managed to secure extended presumptive coverage for Registered Nurses, Registered Psychiatric Nurses, Graduate Nurses, and undergraduate nurses.The decision to include nursing students in the presumptive PTSD coverage is noteworthy, as it makes Alberta the only province in the country to explicitly encompass this category, while other provinces such as Ontario and Quebec cover licensed nurses only.“Extending this coverage to nurses means the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) will presume that a nurse’s PTSD diagnosis was caused by the nurse’s work, unless the contrary is proved,” said UNA Labour Relations Director David Harrigan, in an official statement..Alberta nurses ratify new contract with pay and hiring boost .“It also means that psychological injuries other than PTSD will be presumed to be caused by work when the nurse establishes that a traumatic event in the workplace took place, unless there is proof of a non-work cause.”Presumptive PTSD coverage was first introduced into the Alberta Workers’ Compensation Act in 2012, with some professions — such as police officers, firefighters, and paramedics — automatically qualifying for WCB benefits, and it has since been expanded to include correctional officers and emergency dispatchers.Health advocates have long argued that frontline healthcare workers face daily trauma, from witnessing death, to dealing with workplace violence, to having an already stressful workplace environment further exacerbated by COVID-19, with reports of high turnover and burnout among nurses having increased since the pandemic.Harrigan, who served as chief negotiator during the recent bargaining process, emphasized the significance of including nursing students.“We have nursing students in our collective agreement,” he told the Western Standard.“Sometimes, Alberta Health Services (AHS) hires undergraduate nurses in the summer, and they work alongside everyone else. It wouldn’t make sense to say some people are covered and others aren’t.”.ALARMING EXODUS: Nearly half of young nurses in Alberta leaving profession before age 35 .A 2022 report published by the Canadian Health Workforce Network and the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions showed 94% of the nursing workforce exhibited signs of burnout.Additionally, 50% of nurses at the time were considering leaving their jobs.Harrigan said this expanded coverage is expected to help nurses deal with the mental stresses of their profession and navigate claims more easily.“When you end up with a psychological injury, life is hard enough. If you have to fight for compensation, it’s just easier to give up or quit and move on to another profession. This change removes that barrier,” Harrigan said.The UNA also highlighted how past legislative changes affected nurses.“Under previous NDP legislation, all workers were presumptively covered due to the difficulty of proving psychological injury,” Harrigan said.“When the UCP came to power, coverage was limited to first responders, leaving female-dominated professions like nursing excluded.”He also pointed to immediate impacts: “We’ve had six or seven nurses whose psychological injury claims were denied.“With this new regulation, it remains to be seen if their claims will now be automatically approved, but there’s no question it’s already affecting people.”

Alberta nurses gain broader PTSD protections following years of advocacy

Related Stories