This year’s National Nursing Week was May 9 to 15 and, once again, MNU delivered a campaign that had many talking, from the halls of the Manitoba Legislature to the virtual halls of social media, and to the many real halls of our health care facilities.
MNU launched the Sofa Out of Touch campaign with a full-page ad in the Saturday, May 7, edition of the Winnipeg Free Press. Our message to government and specifically to Health Minister Audrey Gordon was simple: in honour of National Nurses Week, we invited Minister Gordon to stop by any facility staffed with nurses and listen to the issues that matter to them. She could even bring her sofa.
That was a play on Minister Gordon’s announcement in early April that she would be holding “sofa conversations” for her Southdale residents. The full Free Press article can be viewed here.
This campaign also graced MNU’s social media channels Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. More importantly, it is bringing the conversation back to where we want it to be: on nurses being forced to work short, being mandated and being denied vacations.
This was our goal, and we certainly achieved it, as we’ve heard from members, influencers on social media, government stakeholders and so many more!
