Canadian hospitals are straining while Omicron is beating health workers while Reuters

Anna Mehler Paperny and Allison Lampert

TORONTO / MONTREAL (Reuters) – After spending a year as an emergency department nurse in a busy Toronto hospital in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic, Aimee Earhart left last week. She will travel to Florida on a short-term contract before working as a travel nurse, which she expects to double her salary.

“We’re burned all day,” Earhart said. He says he will miss his co-workers and would stay if working conditions were better.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the highly contagious Omicron variant have worsened the plight of hospital staff in Canada.

Interviews with a dozen health workers, including eight current nurses and ex-nurses, reveal that a pandemic wave that hit at the worst possible time is a strained health care system – the disease sidelines workers because more COVID-19 patients need to be hospitalized. forcing staff to run out. to take on more work for two unstoppable years.

Hospitals have asked staff to waive their vacations or take extra shifts.

Canadians are proud of their public health system. But by failing to invest properly in it, critics say the government has left it vulnerable to years-long public health damage. Failure to leave and replace health workers – due to training and certification delays, limited salaries or the perception of a punitive profession – could damage the capacity of the health system.

Employment in the health and social care sector in Canada increased by 78.8% between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

The Ontario government, which has been on fire for reducing the salaries of some pre-pandemic public workers, including nurses, said in a statement that it has added 6,700 health workers and workers since the pandemic began and plans to increase another 6,000 by March. It has not been clarified whether the climb is clean.

‘I DIDN’T GIVE ANY MORE’

Lindsay (NYSE 🙂 Peltsch knew she had to quit when she let the patient want to bathe.

“I still did, but I no longer got the same feeling of joy,” he said. “It sounds small, but it’s a big deal because it’s a big part of what we do to the dignity of the people.”

Peltsch worked as a pediatric nurse for 12 years, 10 of them at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. She fell in love with nursing, but the tension became too much, she said.

Full-time staff shifts became weird. One of his last ER rounds was missing 10 nurses. He also feels a lack of respect for the profession.

“I got to a point where I couldn’t give it any more.”

A spokesman for SickKids said the hospital had “experienced staffing challenges” but did not know that the shifts of the critical care units were 10 short nurses.

Praveen Nakesvaran and his fellow respiratory therapists at Humber River Hospital have taken on the tasks that nurses typically perform when they suffer from COVID-19 patients – hoping to boost lung function in hopes of boosting lung function.

“We usually stay at the head of the bed: we make sure the tube is safe,” Nakesvaran said. “Now we’re doing nursing work, too.”

Suzi Laj, director of the hospital’s intensive care unit, says she knows morale has been a problem and wants to address it by starting daily conversations and bringing in chaplaincy staff. “They’re trying to stay hopeful and, you know, help … but their resilience is very bad,” he said.

Public health experts say the peak of Omicron could be approaching in Canada, and Ontario announced plans to release the cuts last week. But for now, the health care workers’ crisis continues.

Some provinces have made provisions for health workers to test positive for COVID-19 and return to work immediately; Internationally trained nurses in Ontario often face obstacles and long waits in order to practice in Canada, allowing them to gain work experience in hospitals.

Manitoba, meanwhile, said it would send hundreds of patients for procedures in North Dakota because its hospitals lack capacity.

‘WE DON’T ASK FOR EASIER WORK’

When an ER nurse in Montreal had a serious case of laryngitis in one shift, she felt confused between working to help colleagues and resting at home and waiting for the results of COVID-19 tests, she told Reuters.

A young nurse who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation at work said she was encouraged to complete her shift because her co-workers needed help.

“It was really more guilt than anything,” he said.

“You feel like you’re leaving those who are working in a very hard place.”

Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Ontario Registered Nurses Association, receives calls from nurses across the province asking how they will cope. “All hospitals are in turmoil.”

According to him, it becomes “unsafe care”.

When Peltsch talks to his former colleagues, they say, “Don’t come back.” … A resilient group of people has started to fall, “he said.

“We’re not asking for easier work. We’re asking for the hard work we signed up to be able to do safely.”