{"id":79651,"date":"2022-07-28T16:36:39","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T20:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=79651"},"modified":"2022-07-28T16:46:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T20:46:27","slug":"ontario-ers-facing-closure-due-to-longstanding-nursing-issues-says-brock-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/07\/ontario-ers-facing-closure-due-to-longstanding-nursing-issues-says-brock-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario ERs facing closure due to longstanding nursing issues, says Brock expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Situation critical. Recent news that many Ontario emergency departments (ERs) are on the brink of closing due to nursing shortages is dire but not surprising to Connie Schumacher.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ER is usually the first to signal a warning, and ER overcrowding has been an issue that has not been adequately addressed in decades,\u201d says the Assistant Professor of Nursing at Brock University.<\/p>\n<p>Schumacher says merely hiring more nurses is a short-term solution to underlying, long-festering problems in Ontario\u2019s health-care system that need to be fixed.<\/p>\n<p>These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bill 124, legislation passed in 2019 that limits wage increases to a maximum of one per cent total compensation for three years for registered nurses (RN), nurse practitioners and health-care professionals. \u201cBill 124 is a contentious issue that has contributed to the moral distress and undervalued climate that now exists within the current nursing workforce,\u201d Schumacher says.<\/li>\n<li>A chronic shortage of hospital beds.<\/li>\n<li>The loosening of public health measures, such as dropping the mask mandate, \u201cthat has allowed for unchecked transmission of an airborne pathogen,\u201d she says.<\/li>\n<li>And the lowest <a href=\"https:\/\/rnao.ca\/fr\/news\/media-releases\/2018\/06\/14\/ontario-has-worst-rn-population-ratio-canada-province-must-hire-more-#:~:text=Figures%20released%20today%20by%20the,across%20the%20rest%20of%20Canada.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">RN-to population ratio<\/a> in Canada, which \u201chas most likely contributed to the current shortage,\u201d she adds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cMy point is nurses are burnt out and leaving the workforce. There\u2019s a narrative of \u2018increase the workforce\u2019 without addressing the underlying issues that pre-existed the pandemic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Schumacher, who is an RN, worked in the ER of Hamilton\u2019s Juravinski\/Henderson Hospital from 1998 to 2010.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that time, the ER was constantly in a flux of overcapacity with no access to beds, sometimes having more than 20 admitted patients in the emergency department waiting for beds,\u201d she says. \u201cBeds and nurses are uniquely tied \u2014 you cannot increase beds without increasing the complement of staff that would care for the patient occupying the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The entire system needs to be reformed, Schumacher says. \u201cEven if we increase the workforce, there still needs to be amenable work conditions as an incentive for RNs to stay in Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Schumacher notes that Brock University has <a href=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/05\/brock-nursing-experiencing-unprecedented-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expanded its Nursing program<\/a> to meet the <a href=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/05\/brock-prepares-future-nurses-for-challenges-in-the-field\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">challenges<\/a> in the field. She says two years ago, Brock enrolled 80 first-year Nursing students.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome this September, we are projected to exceed an intake of 225 Nursing students in first year,\u201d she says, adding that 94 Nursing students graduated this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Situation critical. Recent news that many Ontario emergency departments (ERs) are on the brink of closing due to nursing shortages is dire but not surprising to Connie Schumacher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":79652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,3319,1,4],"tags":[10969,7488,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79655,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79651\/revisions\/79655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}