Nursing cuts hurting hospital care in Ontario, union says

Since January, 625 RN jobs have been cut, mostly in hospitals where patient care is suffering, says nurses’ union.

Thestar.com
Oct. 22, 2015
By Theresa Boyle

Nursing cutbacks in hospitals are leading to “really disturbing” stories, including patient deaths in hallways and compromised deliveries of babies, the profession’s union warns.

In the province’s quest to squeeze hospital budgets, 625 registered nursing positions have been cut since January and patients are ultimately paying the price, Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, told a news conference at Queen’s Park on Thursday.

More mistakes are occurring in hospitals as beds and staff get cut, and only the most acutely ill of patients get admitted, she said.

Haslam-Stroud offered up a laundry list of recent examples, but declined to specify what hospitals were involved because of patient privacy.

In one case, a caesarean section was delayed because there were not enough RNs on staff on an overnight shift. When the baby was delivered the next day, it had a low Apgar score, indicating it might have experienced difficulties during birth.

In another hospital, Haslam-Stroud said a patient was admitted from the emergency department but left on a stretcher in a hallway with insufficient monitoring. The patient fell off the stretcher, broke his hip and died.

She said critically ill patients are prematurely “kicked out” of intensive care units and moved to other units where staffing ratios are lower.

“They end up having cardiac complications and are dying,” she said.

Patients are often kept in the dark about things that go wrong in hospitals, Haslam-Stroud said.

“They don’t know that the reason their insulin was late ... was because we didn’t have enough RNs that day to care for them. They don’t know that the blood work was missed because we didn’t have enough RNs. They didn’t know their IV blew because we didn’t have an RN there to (monitor),” she said.

“The near misses are horrendous,” she added.

The nurses want the province to place a moratorium on RN cuts.

They have launched a large advertising campaign to spread their message. They also have an online petition that they are inviting Ontarians to sign at nursesknow.ona.org.

In question period at the legislature, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath warned that four years of frozen hospital budgets are taking their toll. With less than one RN for every 100 residents, Ontario has the second worst RN staffing ratio in Canada, she said.

“The scientific evidence is clear. Every nurse being cut out of hour hospitals puts patient care and patients’ lives at risk,” Horwath said.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins said the government has been working to stabilize Ontario’s nursing workforce, but acknowledged more work needs to be done.