Feds should listen to health-care ask to avoid nursing catastrophe

Nothing prepares you for your first serious car accident patient in the emergency room. Or the first time a child dies while you are on duty. I remember a few scenes from early in my nursing career vividly. The trauma is etched into my memory. But before the end of a hard shift, our nurse manager and team would have a debrief to ensure we understood we did everything we could have done, that we had done our best. We had the time to do that then because the health-care system wasn’t teetering on the edge of catastrophe, as it is today. I speak to nurses every day. They no longer feel as though they are doing a good job, the way they were trained to do it. They tell me they go home worrying that they didn’t do enough, every night. Recently, a nursing graduate told me she had to choose between paying for housing and for her mental health services. She had experienced much the same trauma that I had, but no one even asked if she was okay. Nursing teams are so short-staffed, they no longer have the time to debrief. Their traumas compound their exhaustion, pushing more into an adrenaline-fuelled survival mode as they teeter towards, or plunge deeper, into burnout. This crisis has been years in the making. Even before the pandemic, burnout rates among nurses were extreme. According to data commissioned by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, more than 60 per cent experienced some symptoms of burnout, while almost 30 per cent were experiencing clinical burnout. Since the pandemic, those numbers have increased to 94 per cent of nurses experiencing burnout, with almost half now classified as clinical, meaning they need mental health supports. The very people Canadians depend upon to care for them are no longer able to care for themselves. As a result, many nurses are quitting, and positions aren’t being filled. Nurse vacancies increased by 133 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the same period in 2021. Now, more than half of all nurses in Canada are considering leaving their current position in the next year, including 19 per cent who are considering leaving nursing altogether. Linda Silas is the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. CFNU photograph by Blair Gable For months, hospitals have been forced to cut services or shut down entire departments because of shortages of nurses and doctors. Wait times for life-saving treatments and surgeries continue to climb. And our aging population continues to have less and less access to quality care. Concerted government action is urgently needed to turn the tide and stem the exodus of nurses from the system. For starters, we need to restore hope in two ways. First, by giving them a light at the end of the tunnel with firm timelines and real accountability for improving nurse-patient ratios. That means funding proven programs to retain and recruit more nurses, including returning those who have left the profession. And funding for more nursing seats, bridging programs, new mentorship initiatives, and support for transitioning internationally educated nurses. And second, by providing immediate and ongoing support for nurses’ mental health programs. Nursing has always been a tough job. People go into the profession for that very reason because they want to help people and aren’t afraid of a challenge. The problem is it’s not a tough job anymore, it’s an impossible one. Canada’s nurses are some of the strongest, most resilient people I know. They have seen great hardship and suffering in their patients, so they do not ask for help lightly. And if we don’t take immediate action, we risk suffering a system-wide failure of our treasured universal public health-care system. Canada’s premiers have been listening to nurses. For years, they have been asking the federal government to increase health transfers so they can make these critically needed investments into nursing. Next week, federal, provincial, and territorial governments will assemble at the Council of the Federation meeting to discuss health care. Our message has never been clearer. Canada’s health-care system is on the brink of catastrophe. We must fix the dire shortage of nurses. Linda Silas is the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. The Hill Times