Nearly two and a half years into the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one frontline nurse says emergency departments are stretched thin amid persistent staff shortages.
“Now things are worse. And I don’t think the general public understands how difficult it is to be a patient or a nurse right now,” Birgit Umaygba, an intensive care nurse in Toronto, told CTV News Channel on Monday.
Several Ontario hospitals announced this weekend that they will temporarily close or reduce services in their emergency departments and intensive care units due to the ongoing staffing crisis.
Since the start of the pandemic, nurses across Canada have faced long work hours with little time for rest and vacation.
“It’s difficult for patients who have to wait hours in the emergency room just to be seen, let alone treated,” Umaygba said. “People are suffering – both staff and patients. It’s very challenging at the moment.”
It’s a similar story in British Columbia, where emergency rooms at four hospitals in the province’s interior were temporarily closed in mid-July. And in New Brunswick, several emergency departments have had to cut their hours due to staff shortages.
In June, Statistics Canada reported an all-time high of 136,800 health-care job vacancies in the first quarter of 2022 – almost double the amount reported in the first quarter of 2020. Additionally, one in four nurses said , that he plans to leave their job within the next three years.
A survey conducted by the Canadian Union of Public Employees this year found that 87 per cent of 2,600 registered practical nurses in hospitals considered leaving their jobs after facing poor working conditions and abuse from patients’ families.
“Nurses are really tired and they’re like, ‘You know what? I’m done.” And working conditions have not improved. They have actually gotten worse,” Umaygba said.
The intensive care nurse said she had to take a 16-hour shift last week because there was no other nurse to take over the care of a critically ill patient.
“I have colleagues in their 20s, just last week in the nurses’ lounge talking about starting anti-anxiety medication, just because of the stress of the job, not knowing what to expect when you come in, taking on more than you can really handle,” said she.
Last month, Canada’s premiers gathered in Victoria to call for more health care funding from the federal government to address chronic staffing shortages.
Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones’ office told The Canadian Press on Friday in a written statement that the province is working with “all partners,” including hospitals and unions, and said Ontario has “an ambitious plan for the largest recruitment and training in health care initiative in the history of the province’.
But Umaygba remains skeptical about the province’s recruitment plan, adding that starting in 2019, nurse salary increases are limited due to Bill 124.
“Where are they going to hire nurses from? Which nurses will enter this kind of workforce right now and not leave? The workload has increased and nurses’ salaries are limited to a one percent increase per year,” she said. “That’s the number one thing the Ford government needs to work on: repealing Bill 124.”
With files from CTVNews.ca’s Deanna Zaidi, Melissa Lopez-Martinez and The Canadian Press.
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