danger pay

[toronto rn]

I just heard that the four Toronto hospitals designated for the care of SARS patients will be paying the nurses working with SARS patients danger pay at the rate of double their usual salary.

I know it is early yet in the designation of this pay but is this fair? The critical care unit I work in has taken care of SARS patients from day one and currently our SARS floor and all of our negitive pressure isolation rooms are full with critically ill patients who are designated as suspect SARS. My hospital wasn't on the list of hospitals receiving danger pay. For that matter neither was several other hospitals which are designated level 2 with nurses who are still quarantined. Many of the nurses who are hospitalized with SARS didn't work in the SARS area, they didn't percieve themselves to be at risk yet they were more at risk than anyone else. Is this designation of danger pay fair?

[fergus51]

Did you all get your ONA letter about this? It calls the danger pay a divisive ploy by the government which purposely puts ONA in a difficult position, considering it is clearly not in the collective agreement. It's just going to cause a situation of nurse against nurse, especially when the grievances start!!!

I still think it's dumb! It was nurses on the orthopedic ward who got it at York, and Maternity nurses at Sinai who were exposed recently by that med student. Why should nurses on a SARS unit who get the best protection from it (because they have the best equipment) be the only ones getting danger pay?

[rnrncan]

Nurses should all get danger pay -I was injured twice while working - once by a agitated patient and once by chlorine gas and had to fight like mad with ONA"S help for compensation! and this was long before SARS

[travelbug]

For all of you working with people with SARS, God Bless you all. I work psych and thought it was the most intense dangerous work in nursing, how wrong I was, sorry.