Nursing Week Greetings to the members of the Staff Nurse Interest Group!
SNIG is offering a Nursing Week $500 bursary for education to any member of SNIG. Please check it out on SNIG Facebook page. It is easy to apply.
Thank you for the difficult and important work that you do in service for the people of Ontario. My husband, and father of my children, has been the recipient of hospital and home care in the last couple of months for a serious illness and I have been touched and impressed by the care given by nurses, physicians, PSWs and other staff. They have treated him and my family with kindness, respect and patience. I am so thankful that we have a high-quality publicly funded health-care system that we can access when we need it, whether we have a lot of money or not.
I am a member of the Ontario Health Coalition, donating $10 per month. The work of OHC is to protect and improve our public health care system and to honour and strengthen the principles of the Canada Health Act. Presently the Ontario government is underfunding our health care system, creating a crisis with closing ERs around the province, using agency nurses at higher cost and promoting more privatization of our health care.
The OHC is sponsoring a protest and march in Toronto on May 30 at 12 p.m., starting at Nathan Phillips Square and going to the Ontario Legislature. There will be bussing of people from outside of Toronto. Contact OHC if you wish to take part. I went to a similar action last fall and I learned a lot from different speakers: health-care workers, union representatives, and patients.
SNIG has participated in several webinars in last few months: RNAO fall tour with Claudette Holloway, travel nursing with Adrienne Kappes, preparing for NCLEX, and writing resumes and doing job interviews with Reik Vandenberg, planetary health with ONEIG featuring chair Rob Samulack. We generally work with other Interest groups and chapters in presenting webinars. SNIG was planning to sponsor a webinar for May on the topic of PPE but this was cancelled as it was brought to our attention that there may be a conflict of interest in having presenters from industry.
SNIG is desperately in need of executive members as myself, Una Ferguson and Brad Manuel are holding down the group. We need executive members in Policy, Social Media, and Student ENO’s. You could also join as Member at Large if you wanted a less structured role. We meet by Zoom about every 1–2 months and in person at least twice a year. We have an AGM in June at the RNAO AGM and a planning session in Kingston, and in certain roles some of us attend RNAO Assemblies. Benefits are networking, making fast friendships, being more informed, andbeing able to take part in political actions more readily. Expenses paid for travel to meetings.
Having an executive position in your chapter or an Interest group makes all the difference in getting the most out of RNAO membership. Please email staffnurseinterestgroup@gmail.com if you are interested
RNAO AGM is coming up June 20–22. The meeting on June 21 is free for members. SNIG will have a display table on Friday, June 21 so stop by and say hello. Also SNIG will have its own AGM on Saturday June 22. We will have a very short breakfast meeting and then a Zumba exercise class led by Shaima Rezazada. RetNIG is joining us and sharing expenses. Again, no cost to you for attending the meeting.
Hope to see you in June. Drop by the SNIG table – and have a great Nursing Week!
Brenda Hutton, Chair, and the SNIG executive