Almost 70 per cent of nurses in Ontario say they cannot provide adequate patient care due to insufficient time and resources, and nearly one in two are considering leaving the profession, a new study shows.
The Association of Registered Practical Nurses (WeRPN) of Ontario released survey results Tuesday, revealing the dire state of nursing in the province.
“I believe these findings will shock the public – nearly seven in 10 nurses see patient health at risk because there is simply not enough time, resources and staffing levels,” said Diane Martin, CEO of WeRPN. in a statement. “Worryingly, this is now normalizing.”
WeRPN represents over 55,000 RPNs nationwide and 763 of them participated in the online survey from May 1-9, 2022.
The study was a follow-up study to a December 2020 study that surveyed RPNs about the state of nursing care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the latest survey, 93 percent of nurses say their workload has increased in the past two to three years, and 68 percent say they don’t have the time or resources to provide adequate care to their patients.
Meanwhile, 66 percent of nurses said they had to take on more patients per nurse because of the ongoing nursing shortage, while 87 percent reported taking on more responsibilities in their role.
“As an RPN I do more than one role, I help with PSW work, dining room, reception, in addition to RPN duties: I treat 45 patients on my shift. It’s too much – they all have a lot of geriatric drugs, puffers, drugs, insulin. In addition, the treatment, calls and handling of emergencies. It’s a lot for just one nurse,” wrote an anonymous nurse in the survey.
Four out of five nurses have experienced moral stress in their profession, an increase of more than 10 percent since December 2020.
Eighty-eight per cent of RPNs said they had been affected by staff shortages, with many facing “additional stress and increased isolation”.
Specifically, seven in 10 said they had to work longer hours to cover staff shortages, including 39 percent who worked unpaid overtime at the end of their shifts.
In addition, six in 10 nurses said their mental health had deteriorated due to the stress of staff shortages.
“I feel like we have to constantly rush residents and cut corners to ‘get’ everything done and decide between breaks and completing tasks for each shift,” wrote an anonymous nurse.
The study also revealed that the province has the potential to lose half of its RPN workforce if nurses suffering from burnout are not addressed.
Forty-seven percent of RPNs surveyed said they were considering leaving nursing, up from 34 percent in December 2020.
Additionally, six in ten of these nurses said they would leave the health care sector entirely.
Top reasons for leaving the field include inadequate wages, excessive workloads, and compensation practices that nurses believe are unfair.
As nurses cope with underwhelming working conditions, morale has fallen significantly since December 2020.
Only 36 percent of nurses said they felt proud to be a nurse, a huge drop from 67 percent at the end of 2020.
Additionally, 83 percent of those surveyed said they felt morale in the workplace had deteriorated over the past two years.
When asked what could improve their job satisfaction, 94 percent of nurses said improved salaries, 78 percent said increased staffing levels and 64 percent said standardized workloads.
Higher salaries appear to be the most important goal for the majority of respondents, with 91 percent saying they feel they are not fairly compensated for their role, up from 86 percent in December 2020.
Meanwhile, 75 percent of nurses said they experience financial stress, up from 57 percent in December 2020.
To tackle the worsening plight of nurses, WeRPN executive director Diane Martin outlined three calls for action that the government must implement immediately.
One of the actions is to repeal House Bill 124, which currently limits nurses’ salaries to a maximum of one percent of total compensation over three years. Martin recommended that wages be increased by at least 20 percent to be in line with other nursing groups and to reflect cost-of-living increases.
“While the widespread nursing shortage cannot be immediately alleviated in the short term, such an increase will go a long way towards retaining nurses who are considering leaving. It will also provide nurses with important recognition for boosting morale, which has been very badly affected over the past two years,” Martin wrote in the report.
Martin is also calling on the government to tackle dangerous workloads by hiring more RPNs full-time and ensuring that RPNs’ voices are included in policy-making.
The troubling results come as emergency and intensive care units across the province are severely understaffed amid the pandemic’s seventh wave, with Toronto General Hospital on critical care bed alert for the past two weeks.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford did not provide any new solutions to deal with the staffing crisis, but instead reiterated calls for the federal government to provide more financial support.
METHODOLOGY: For comparison purposes only, the sample plan will have a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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