Thank you.
My name is Michael Parsons. I'm a registered psychiatric nurse in Alberta. I took on a position with PCVRS as an RSS last year. Prior to that, I had positions with Correctional Service Canada, Alberta Health Services, Recovery Alberta and the Department of National Defence as a mental health nurse.
During my time working for PCVRS, I witnessed a few issues coming across that convinced me to resign. A lot of the issues that I was presented with while working through PCVRS breached my code and principles of ethics under my College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Alberta training.
I'm also a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces. I served 15 years. I decided not to wear my medals today because of some of the stuff I witnessed while working for PCVRS. A lot of the time, a lot of veterans were questioned about the integrity of their service and what they were saying. I chose not to wear my medals today because of that, so you can take me a bit seriously when I discuss some of the issues I came across while working for PCVRS.
The first issue that I came across while working with PCVRS was actually during the training. What I noticed was that, even at a director or management level, they were not familiar with a lot of the transitional services that VAC, SISIP or even the Department of National Defence offers during release or medical release. This took up a lot of time. There were a lot of frustrating moments trying to discuss this, especially around SISIP, to the point that I had one of the directors ask me, “Can we purchase SISIP and take over its services, because it's an inconvenience to us?” There were a lot of disagreements and a lot of not being familiar with the services provided.
The second portion, which one of the other witnesses already mentioned, is that they do not follow best practices, especially around approval for treatments. There were a few treatments for clients, including things like ECT or TMS, that were recommended by some of the assessing psychologists or psychiatrists. A lot of the responses to these treatments, or other alternative treatments that the prescribing physician or the psychiatrist would offer, were “Our network does not offer that. Lifemark and PCVRS do not offer that treatment, so we cannot provide that treatment.” Meanwhile, the prescribing doctor, physician or psychiatrist would get frustrated because this patient needed this treatment and PCVRS would not supply it. This was really frustrating in a lot of instances, because some of the veterans needed help right away and, as a lot of the other witnesses mentioned, it would take some time.
Also during my training, I would get the managers to give me lists and charts of clients who were difficult. They would deem them difficult to deal with and they wanted me to review their charts. A lot of the time, they weren't being difficult. They were just wondering why they weren't getting their treatments or the services they were provided in the past.
While doing the training, I also experienced working with a lot of the other interdisciplinary professions that I worked beside. They weren't familiar with mental health or the mental health continuum of care. Again, a lot of the time, they didn't understand best practices.
Here's a direct patient incident: I had a client, a young female, who had been diagnosed with PTSD and had also experienced a sexual assault during her service. I reviewed her chart with the manager and the director and saw in her assessments from the OSI clinic that she was dealing with agoraphobia. She didn't want to leave her house. It was really difficult for her to come in to even talk to a psychologist without experiencing severe anxiety or some thoughts of self-harm.
This was frustrating, because it breached my principles of practice as a psychiatric nurse for non-maleficence. I didn't want to cause any harm. I advised my manager and the director that this was harmful and that I could not complete some of these assessments and continue working for PCVRS—