Behind the story of emergency room closures across the country are affected workers, like “Sue,” a 25-year veteran nurse in Ontario who is openly crying over her decision to leave frontline healthcare.
The 52-year-old, who was independently verified by CTVNews.ca to be a nurse but was asked to protect her identity, said she loved her job caring for patients, having worked as an operating room nurse, in surgical care rooms , and in rehabilitation and palliative care.
But since February, he has been away from work due to stress and is seeing a psychologist after suffering from burnout.
After two intense years of work during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sue said she and her colleagues have faced “bullying” from administrators, who she says force them to serve too many patients than would be considered safe. Others, she says, are ordered to do compulsory overtime to fill staff shortages, due to illness, exhaustion or because colleagues quit.
“When I think about breastfeeding now…it gives me goosebumps,” she said. “There was always a hint of ‘don’t you dare call in sick,’ ‘don’t you dare miss work,’ or ‘we know you’re stressed but Ontario needs you.'”
Sue decided to retire early and said she knows several other experienced nurses who have gone on to work in long-term care, public health nursing or with nursing agencies where they can choose their own work hours and assignments, reducing their stress. Two others who are planning her departure are waiting to notify managers, she added.
“Anyone I spoke to has either left, retired, or is seeing a psychiatrist or counselor and taking antidepressants… How sad is that?” she said.
‘STRETCHED’ AND ‘UNSECURE’ EMERGENCY CARE
This weekend, several hospitals across Canada, particularly in rural communities, announced temporary closures of emergency units and other medical services due to a shortage of nurses and doctors.
glengarry Memorial Hospital, in Alexandria, Ont. is closing its emergency room overnight Saturday and Sunday, while Kamsack Hospital in Kamsack, Sask. is closing hospital beds and reduce emergency hours because there are not enough nurses to care for them.
A hospital in Perth, Ontario has seen its emergency room closed since July 2.
Deb Lefebvre, a registered nurse who lives in Kingston, Ont., but works outside the area in another community, described emergency care in Canada as “unsafe.”
“They are stretched out and they themselves have become unsafe areas for patients to care for as well,” he said. “We leave hospitals … with the feeling that patient care has been compromised.”
Another nurse, independently verified by CTVNews.ca, who asked not to be identified, added: “The staff to patient ratio is also not safe and many nurses are now leaving knowing that patients are not receiving safe care. Call bells left for hours, patients getting dirty because there is no one to take them to the bathroom, patients dying in waiting rooms. Hospitals in Canada are not safe.
On Friday, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs was replaced his health minister and the CEO of Horizon Health Network after a patient died this week in an emergency department waiting room in Fredericton. A death review process has been initiated.
The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians also warned in a statement earlier this month that “it has never been more important to pay attention to the current state of emergency departments,” adding that these facilities are “a window into the health of the medical care”.
Lefebvre said the difficult decision to shut down services is a big red flag. There aren’t enough people to do the job safely, he says. His advice to Canadians heading to the ER in the coming weeks is to bring a friend or family member with them to make sure they are cared for if their condition suddenly worsens.
In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca on Friday, Paul-Émile Cloutier, president and CEO of HealthCareCAN, admitted that the last two and a half years have laid bare Canada’s healthcare system.
“Throughout the pandemic, healthcare workers have worked, and continue to work, hard to provide the best possible care in tremendously challenging circumstances, but what we are seeing now is a healthcare workforce that can no longer cover the cracks in a system that was not built to handle this constant and increasing pressure,” he said. “Patient outcomes and healthcare workforce shortages will not improve if we simply continue to pour more money into a broken system. It must be redesigned to effectively address the changing needs of an aging population and the growing demand for health care services.”
They called on all levels of government to take immediate and concrete action now to “strengthen the health system for tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Michael Howlett, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, sympathized with ER nurses, saying they are carrying a very heavy load.
“They get demoralized, they burn out, and then they leave the department to work somewhere else. With fewer and fewer emergency nurses and doctors across the country, we are having difficulty keeping up with all the care needs and are extremely concerned about potential delays in care,” he told CTVNews.ca in a statement sent by email on Friday.
THE SITUATION COULD GET WORSE
A survey conducted in late 2021 by Statistics Canada indicated that one in four nurses plan to resign due to job stress or mental health concerns in the next three years. (
With a summer wave of COVID-19 underway, frontline departures may intensify, according to Linda Silas, director of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.
“What we hear from our provincial nurses unions is that every day they get a call from nurses who want to change their status, go from full-time to part-time or from part-time to casual, so they drastically reduce their hours or leave. completely by retiring early,” Silas said.
Bonds offered by some provinces like Ontario and Quebec have not worked to stem the tide, he says. “Everyone falls flat on their face, because they’re a flash in the pan,” she said.
The underlying issues, Silas says, are quality of life and how nurses say they are being treated, with many being required to work overtime or denied vacation time. Retaining these veteran and experienced nurses is the first step in “stopping the bleeding” and keeping frontline health care safe, they added.
“Do employers have to work with nurses to see what they need to stay?” she said. “For some, it’s as simple as ‘I can’t be forced to do overtime.’ ‘I have a family.’ ‘So you guarantee me I’ll stay then,'” Silas added.
A NATIONAL SOLUTION?
Prime ministers meeting in Victoria earlier this week demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convene a meeting of prime ministers to reach a health care financing deal.
Nursing groups are also calling on the federal government to develop a national plan to address the nursing shortage, including a plan for how many nurses will be needed in the coming decades.