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Among the many challenges facing hospitals and health systems, none are bigger than workforce burnout. With demand for services surging, especially for an aging population, and mounting retirements of staffers increasingly stressed by work and the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for aggressive changes to be made is only increasing. The emotional and cognitive exhaustion, the feeling of not getting it all done, when work becomes an effort, a chore, a struggle, is affecting not just hospital nurses but nurses across the system — in home care, long-term care, and public health. And when people must wait too long for care, they get anxious, they get angry. Nurses need more support after critical incidents, and better access to onsite mental health care. Source: MSN.com To keep nurses healthy and functioning in the practice environment, supports must be implemented soon. There is crucial need for more support for nurses working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian nurses reported: a lack of adequate support services to allow them to spend time with their patients/clients; a lack of supervisory support; and a lack of access to workplace psychological or mental health supports. For those experiencing mental health issues, a survey reported that supportive colleagues and supervisors were needed for nurses to take a leave of absence and to also return to work. There is a need for more support from both government and employers. The top factor for nurses planning to leave the profession was better workplace supports. Other factors include reduced workload, ability to adjust work schedules, improved benefits, and better career development opportunities. Overall, things must change to keep the burnout on nurses from continuing. RN’s need better support to be able to set boundaries between work and personal life. They need better access to physical and mental health programs. The nursing profession has been protecting and caring for Ontarians during all phases of the pandemic, it’s time we take care of them. Source: rnao.ca
Registered nurses (RN) and nurse practitioners (NP) are an essential part of Ontario’s health-care system. One that should be: accessible, equitable, person-centered, and integrated. And yet, the province has the worst RN-to-population ratio in Canada. Chronic underfunding and understaffing across all health sectors and the relentless replacement of RNs and NPs with less qualified health-care workers is challenging the effectiveness of RNs and NPs and the system as a whole. Source: rnao.ca It comes as no surprise that almost 70 % of registered practical nurses in Ontario say they can’t provide adequate care for patients due to insufficient time and resources, and nearly one in two considering leaving the profession a new survey suggests. With the top reasons for leaving the field include inadequate wages, overbearing workload and compensation practices that nurses feel are unfair. Source: Global News.ca The Government needs to address nurses’ worsening state by repealing Bill 124, which currently caps nurses’ wage increases to a maximum of one per cent total compensation for three years. They also need to address unsafe workloads, by hiring more full-time RPN’s, and to ensure RPN voices are included in policy making. Nurses are the foundational constituents of health care, whether they provide services in the community or in hospitals. Our policymakers must disillusion themselves with the idea that Ontario’s health care crisis can be solved without consulting and supporting nurses. Source: healthtopics.com
A rural Ontario hospital is closing its emergency department until December due to what the health-care organization running it calls a “critical shortage of nurses” and a series of off-and-on closures that have become unsustainable. The Chesley hospital emergency room closed on Friday, with a scheduled reopening date of Dec. 2. Other areas of the hospital like diagnostic imaging services, the inpatient unit and community lab collection will remain operational. The decision to close the ER for two months follows a series of short-notice, temporary closures that the South Bruce Grey Health Centre said are “not a sustainable approach for our staff or the communities we serve. Source: Global News Many doctors and nurses across Canada have been calling for help for months, as the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed resources that they say were already stretched thin. Leading to an unparalleled wave of staff shortages that they say is reaching a breaking point. According to Ontario Health, 18 hospitals in the province have had emergency department service interruptions since the end of June, most often for an overnight shift, due to a shortage of nurses. About 46,000 more hospital staff need to be hired in Ontario just to deal with staff turnover, hospital job vacancies, as well as the impact of the pandemic and the increased needs of a growing and aging population, according to the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. Source: CBC News The Ontario Nurses’ Association said, “announcements of ER closures are becoming all too common and ... they must not be accepted so casually by the government.” We're seeing an unprecedented amount of sustained pressure and strain that has resulted in the need for several hospitals to have to reduce services in their emergency departments in numbers that have not been seen before. What there is very good data on is that the system continues to perform well when it comes to emergent and urgent needs. If you have a heart attack or a stroke or, you need urgent cancer surgery, things like that have largely not been impacted by the pandemic. The challenge really has been that with every wave of the pandemic, it's been sort of a different problem. Early in the pandemic, there was this need for all these ICU beds and that was the focus. And then a wave came along where, ICU wasn't so much the problem, but the medical wards were really filling up with COVID patients. And now in wave seven, we're seeing not so much that the demand for services is up, but the health-care workforce is depleted. Every wave has brought a different kind of challenge. And there hasn’t been enough time between the waves to recover. The shutdown follows a spate of temporary emergency room closures at hospitals across Ontario over the last several months due to lack of staff, particularly nurses. Hospitals are here to serve and will continue to do everything possible to meet the needs of the people of Ontario. Hospitals have said severe staff shortages, along with COVID-19 infections and burnout among health-care workers are to blame for the temporary closures.
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