Most of our health administrators have no ingenuity for innovation and creativity, their main asset has been to follow blindly the leader of the leaders, that is Brian Rourke, also known as the Supreme Asset of the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations(3) (SAHO). To recognize a real valuable personal asset(4) from a large crowd you have to weigh whatever they say. Therefore, I am going to provide you with some statements Jim Saunders, interim CEO for Regina Health District, has made in rationalizing the closure of the surgical theatre:

"At this point in time we are continuing to pursue all of our strategies related to our ability to staff the ORs adequately, but the bottom line is, for a number of reasons just coming together related to our ability to staff, we found we had no alternative other than to close one OR.... But we are not out of the woods at all, we still have a lot of work to do to increase our recruitment and to ensure we give them (the nurses) a work environment that they can cope with as professionals... We are looking at everything across the district, as we should, in a comprehensive manner to try and see if there are ways to be more efficient without losing our capacity for programs and services or quality. This is a different issue. Actually the whole overtime issue is a budget issue because of the cost of overtime, but it is the displacement of cost not the amount that is the issue."

Can you believe it? Jim Saunders addresses nurses as them and in a paternalistic manner he wants to "give them a work environment that they can cope with as professionals." Just tell me if this is a put down statement by this incompetent health administrator. I hope the nurses will revolt against this small asset of a man. I must say that I am not a judgmental person, but as I read and reread the above quotation I become more and more convinced that the reasons we have a health care crisis is because our health care leaders are not worth any asset.

To borrow some deep thoughts from Les MacPherson, journalist with The StarPhoenix, I must say that Jim Saunders "has mastered the art of speaking without saying anything" and I may add he has mastered the art of putting down professional people. This is the ingenuity of most of our leaders, the art of speaking without saying anything and the art of putting down people. These leaders have no vision, they have no heart, they have no responsibility, mind they have the asset of being blindly obedient to the "Powers that Be," that same power the Germans experienced with Hitler. The crisis of health care is not a nursing shortage, it is a crisis of leadership, it is a crisis for not being respectful to each other, it is a crisis affecting all the province, it is a crisis of democracy.

Endnotes

Quote by Donella Meadows "challenging a paradigm is not a part-time job. It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the world for not getting it. The world has a vested interest in, a commitment to, not getting it. The point has to be made patiently and repeatedly, day after day after day" ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4143-1.pdf http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/default.htm

General reference: Articles by Mario deSantis published by North Central Internet News

1. Operating room closed, by Anne Kyle, The Leader-Post, March 22, 2000, Regina, Saskatchewn

2. Home care patients complain of nonstop new faces, CBC Saskatchewan, http://sask.cbc.ca/ Web Posted | Feb 4 2000 5:51 PM EST

3. Saskatchewan Health Information Network-SHIN: Ignoring its mandate and diverting money for the Y2K Nightmare, by Mario deSantis, November 3, 1999

4. Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, by Thomas A. Stewart, Doubleday, 1997