October 5, 2024

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Union survey points to crisis in health-care sector staffing

Union survey points to crisis in health-care sector staffing

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Union leaders warn local health workers are trying to cope with the same high stress and understaffing strains as identified in a troubling new health sector job satisfaction survey.

“We have the same problem in Windsor,” said Tullio DiPonti, president of Unifor Local 2458, which represents about 2,500 health-care workers in Windsor and Essex County.

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Long wait times in emergency rooms and heavy workloads leave many staff workers thinking “they can’t do it anymore,” said DiPonti, whose union represents about 4,000 health sector workers from Windsor to Tobermory.

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Polling firm Nanos recently surveyed more than 750 Canadian Union of Public Employees workers, including registered practical nurses, personal support workers, housekeepers, and clerical staff.

Of those surveyed, 62 per cent said they were dealing with exhaustion and high stress levels, 41 per cent reported dreading going to work and two in five are considering leaving their jobs.

The survey findings have again triggered union warnings of a staffing crisis facing the sector and the need for action.

“The results are alarming to say the least — how are we going to keep our hospitals functioning without staff?” Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, CUPE’s hospital division, said in a release on the union’s website.

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A registered nurse and a nursing student are shown in the Windsor Regional Hospital Met campus’s intensive care unit on Jan. 18, 2021. Photo by Dan Janisse /Windsor Star

Those numbers are better than a Nanos survey solely of registered practical nurses in April, when 60 per cent of RPNs indicated they were considering leaving the profession and 64 per cent said they dreaded going to work.

But the new survey is an indication that the health-care sector remains in crisis, say DiPonti and Ontario Nurses Association president Erin Ariss.
Tullio DiPonti, president of Unifor Local 2458, representing workers in the health care sector.

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“That’s where the dread comes in,” DiPonti said of a workplace situation that doesn’t appear to be improving.

“Because they know that’s an everyday occurrence and it’s going to keep on happening. They don’t see an end in sight.”

Jammed emergency rooms are a heavy load on staff, and they’re being exacerbated by the closure of smaller hospitals, which filters patients to ERs in larger community hospitals like Windsor Regional Hospital, he said.

DiPonti said Windsor needs more than two local emergency rooms to service the region.

Wait times for Windsor’s emergency departments are currently not available on Health Quality Ontario’s website, though Windsor’s wait times have typically been among the longest in the province for some time.

“Everybody, from the housekeeper all the way to the specialist to the CEO, are doing their best to take care of the residents of Windsor,”  DiPonti said. “It’s not just the hospital, it’s a health-care crisis that affects human beings.”

Ariss said a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a non-profit organization that compiles information on Canada’s health-care system, shows Ontario needs to hire 24,000 nurses just to bring the nurse-to-patient ratio equal to the rest of Canada.

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“We’re seeing vacancies all over Ontario and all sectors of health care,” said Ariss. “There are over 9,000 vacancies in hospitals alone.”

In June, the Ontario Health Ministry said 63,000 new nurses and nearly 8,000 new doctors had registered to work in Ontario since 2018.

And more than 15,000 new nurses registered to work in 2022, with another 27,000 nurses were studying at a college or university.

The government also has programs aimed at fast-tracking internationally trained nurses, supporting nursing and medical students working in hospitals, guaranteeing employment for newly graduated nurses making the transition from school to the workplace, and an incentive program for nurses who commit to working in under-serviced areas.

But nurses are leaving the profession so fast the government can’t keep up, said Ariss.

“When you look at the College of Nurses of Ontario statistics, they tell us that at least 35,000 nurses have left the practice environment since 2018. So … for every 10 new nurses Ontario hires, six nurses are leaving the profession,” she said.

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The Ontario Nurses Association reports that information provided by Windsor Regional shows 140 registered nurse vacancies as of the end of September.

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A University of Windsor nursing student who is an undergraduate nursing employee at Windsor Regional Hospital’s Met campus is shown in the oncology department on April 10, 2023. Photo by Dax Melmer /Windsor Star

David Musyj, CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital, addressed the staffing issue at a hospital board meeting Jan. 4.

He said a recent report indicated staffing levels at Ontario hospitals had increased only 0.4 per cent over the last few years, but WRH’s clinical staffing increased by 10 per cent.

Registered nursing vacancies are the “lowest I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve been here over 20 years,” said Musyj.

Some Ontario hospitals have used nurses from agencies to address staff shortages, he said. “We don’t have to do that, which is great.

“And we’re doing this in a market where we’re competing against the United States with the American dollar.”

But Ariss said the pressures nursing staff in Windsor and Essex County face will make working across the border even more attractive due to higher pay and lower workloads.

About 1,600 nurses who live in Essex County work in Michigan.

Ariss said the province isn’t graduating enough nurses. Ontario should provide incentives, such as paying nurses tuition, as it now does for new cadets at the Ontario Police College, she said.

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Ontario needs to move faster to hire more nurses to ease the workload on current staff and improve working conditions, she said.

And nurses’ wages must be improved, Ariss said. A lot of nurses left after Bill 124 capped their salaries at one-per-cent increases over three years starting in 2019, she said.

The bill was ruled unconstitutional in November 2022, but the province is appealing that decision. In the meantime, an arbitrator in June awarded 3.75-per-cent and 2.5-per-cent wage increases for each of the last two year — above the one-per-cent government raise — to some health-care workers, such as dietary aides, personal support workers and registered practical nurses.

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Ariss said lower nurse-to-patient ratios and establishing mentorship programs to allow senior nurses to train new recruits would also help attract and retain nurses.

She also called for the government to address the violence health-care workers face in the workplace, which she said is “rampant.”

“I was an emergency department nurse for 20 years. I have had my hand broken, been kicked and punched and bitten and spat at dozens and dozens of times, and pushed when I was visibly pregnant, kicked in the stomach.

“This is a daily occurrence in nursing.  It changes you and it needs to be addressed.”

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