CALEB NICKERSON
OUTAOUAIS Oct. 21, 2020
Health care workers in the Pontiac, as well as the rest of the CISSSO network, are being sent back to work before receiving the results of their COVID tests.
A local employee who found out about the situation earlier this month, said that they were shocked by the situation. The source spoke with THE EQUITY under the condition of anonymity, as they are not authorized to speak with the media and feared repercussions from managers at CISSSO.
“[Nurses] go for their tests and they are told, ‘We’ve decided that you’re low risk, you go back,’” they said. “I guess the stipulation is that they have to be short-staffed, but they’ve been short-staffed since the beginning of time.
“I was floored, my bubble has been completely popped,” they continued. “If that’s where we’re at, why don’t we just tell people what we’re doing?”
The health authority claims that such a situation would only . . .
occur under specific circumstances.
“If nurses have been screened for an outbreak on a unit, have not been identified as a high-risk close contact and are asymptomatic, they may be at work awaiting their test results,” explained CISSSO media relations agent Patricia Rhéaume in an email. “The CISSSO employee team follows the recommendations of the National Institute of Public Health. According to the INSPQ recommendations, positive employees must be off work for a period of ten days and may return to work only if they meet the clinical criteria.”
Rhéaume added that the recommendations apply not only to nurses, but all CISSSO employees.
Chantal St-Aubin, an officer with the regional nurses’ union, Syndicat des professionnels en soins de l’Outaouais, said that they recommend that members isolate themselves until they receive their results, but added that she was unsure of what the financial repercussions could be. She said they had heard of cases of their members being asked to return to work before receiving their COVID test results.
“[If] they’re asymptomatic, no symptoms, then the public health could ask them to go back to work, but it really depends on what the public health tells them to do,” she said.
“Even though the public health tells them to go to work even though they have no symptoms, our position on that is that they should be staying at home until they got their results, just to make sure that there’s no contamination involved,” she continued. “If they decide to do self-isolation and it’s not recommended by public health, the workers decide to voluntarily do isolation, at that time, well they’re just not paid. I don’t know how the employer will react to that, just go off without pay or what the rations would be.”
