Story 107

I work in healthcare. Conditions have been getting worse and where I worked I felt it was just a matter of time before a patient was permanently hurt. I’d never recover from that, even if I knew it wasn’t my fault, and I’d been thinking about resigning.

Coming on one shift I got a very busy assignment, and then was assigned to a patient that would easily need two staff to stabilize, plus the original group. I wrote and sent my resignation that night, stating conditions were unsafe.

Two days later I got called in over concerns with my work practices. Their concerns were things I’d been doing the same way for over a decade, and had positive performance reviews documented. I will spare you the play-by-play of the last year but I was reported to my regulatory College three times and still have a completely clean license afterwards. I was blackballed throughout my area so eventually I had to leave the country for work.  I went into debt by 40K and was taking minimum wage positions while trying to find work even out of town or out of province.

The health authority offered me 10K, a good reference letter, and the ability to work for them again in any other hospital with an NDA.  If I sign, I can’t speak about that year, or explain why I’ve been spoken about so poorly.  Worse, they get to continue to fire and blackball employees that speak up about shortcomings in our healthcare system.