'Serious trouble': New Ontario report latest example of Canada's health-care crisis

Morale among Ontario health-care workers is deteriorating, according to a new report.

The peer-reviewed study, released on Monday, found a growing staffing crisis is putting the well-being of hospital workers and patients at risk.

"This study found that our cherished public health-care system is in serious trouble," said researcher Dr. James Brophy.

"We heard about the daily fear hospital workers felt going to work and being unable to perform the duties of caring for their patients because of understaffing."

The study is based on 26 in-depth interviews with Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario hospital workers and a survey taken by 775 of their colleagues.

The researchers concealed the identities of the health-care workers who took part in the study.

"We hardly have time to take breaks or go to the washroom. I don't think that patients are getting the care they need," said one outpatient clinic nurse in their interview.

Other nurses said they used to be excited about their jobs, but now dread going to work.

"You think it can’t get any worse and it just got worse," said a trauma department nurse.

"I was going through increasing panic attacks before work, crying before I got into the car."

Brophy noted several respondents suffered depression, physical and mental exhaustion and burnout because of their working conditions.

The concerns echo those of Saskatchewan registered nurses who expressed their own worries with staffing shortages in a survey released last fall.

Three in five registered nurses said they considered leaving the profession in the last 12 months. More than 90 per cent said their working conditions negatively impacted their mental health.

"There’s an irrefutable link between registered nurse burnout and poorer patient outcomes, and right now, we risk worsening shortages as faith in workplace support and commitment to fix the problem dwindles," Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory said at the time the results were released.

Ontario researchers gathered their information last fall coming off a summer of record-breaking emergency room closures and service disruptions in Ontario, said Michael Hurley, the president of CUPE's Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.

The report found that underfunding, understaffing, deregulation and privatization of the health-care system all affected the strain put on workers.

"Over time, this just corrodes people," Hurley said.

There is worry these effects will be compounded as more nurses consider leaving the profession, the researchers said.

B.C. is looking to become the first province to introduce a minimum nurse-patient ratio to cut down on the workload and retain nurses.

Other jurisdictions that have implemented minimum nurse-patient ratios, such as California and Australia, recorded promising results, according to BC Nurses’ Union vice president, Tristan Newby.

"They (nurses) endure less workplace injuries. There are less medication errors and there are less hospital acquired infections and less readmissions to hospital," Newby said.

"It's a win-win for the nurses, the profession and for the patients."

Without the minimum ratio, some departments have one nurse looking after upwards of 16 patients overnight, Newby said. Another department in B.C. was recently operating at less than 50 per cent of its baseline staffing.

"If you don't have baseline staffing, you're not able to provide the minimum amount of care, let alone, a high quality standard of care," Newby said.

"You're just limping along, you're surviving. And that's unfortunately, across the province, we see that."

Under the minimum ratio, there would need to be at least one nurse for every four patients in medical and surgical units at all times.

Newby said acute care settings will begin implementing the ratios in the fall.