Nursing runs in the family
Name: Jun Dizon
Occupation: RN with Fraser Health, acting Clinical Nurse Educator at Peace Arch Hospital
Nurse since 1989
Union: BCNU
Jun Dizon has seen firsthand what can happen when workers engage with their union: improved conditions for patients and healthcare workers alike.
In 2007, when the issue of closing the unit he worked on at Riverview Hospital was first raised, the BC Nurses’ Union got involved to ensure that best practices were being followed for nurses and their patients.
“The union is there to protect the members,” says Dizon. “The bottom line is that we want to provide the best care for the patients.” He urges workers to get involved, saying “back in my home country, there is no nurses’ union, there’s nobody you can go to for help. Young nurses just starting out here should get involved; learn your rights and responsibilities.”
Jun received his first nursing training in the Philippines, where he nursed for 4 years before coming to Canada in 1992. Although he has two aunts and a sister who are nurses, he credits his grandmother for helping to guide him into his career by counselling him that “nursing is a ticket to a better life. You will learn skills so you can go anywhere you want to go.”
“In my second year at nursing school, I started to fall in love with nursing when my clinical training began. It was something I was good at.”
Jun’s first year in Canada in 1992 involved completing a nursing recertification program and adjusting to life in a new country. Arriving with his parents, Jun took any job he could find, including cleaning parking lots and working at McDonalds, while preparing for his nursing exams.
Jun successfully completed his compulsory exams and began nursing in Canada in 1993.
When a friend spotted a job posting at Riverview for an RN, Jun hesitated. Psychiatric nursing wasn’t the career path he had envisioned. “There can be stigma regarding mental health illness,” says Dizon. “I thought I would only stay a few years and then move to another hospital.”
However, Jun’s intellectual and vocational curiosity were piqued right away “doing blind studies on anti-psychotic medication. We were one of the first units that were trying newer kinds of such medications. They respected nurses’ feedback and data, our observations were valued. It was on the cutting edge of mental health treatment and it’s how I fell in love with psychiatry.”
With the closing of Riverview Hospital, Jun has relocated to Peace Arch Hospital’s Oceanside Unit withmany of the older adult psychiatry patients he cared for at Riverview. “The management tried to work closely with nurses to achieve the best care for patients,” he says of the transition.
Looking back on his career thus far, Jun says “I’m so glad my grandmother enrolled me in the college of nursing. It’s a profession that can really make a difference in people’s lives when they are at their most vulnerable.”