In August, Doug Ford issued a directive to the College of Nurses to speed up the accreditation of internationally educated nurses with foreign training in an attempt to address the severe nursing shortage.
The Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) estimates that Ontario needs about 30,000 registered nurses (RNs). They also believe there are about 750 internationally educated nurses in the province ready to join the workforce.
In a written statement to Oakville News, Joan Jickling, Senior Vice President of Patient Engagement and Chief Nursing Executive for Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH), said, “Staffing an organization, such as ours, is a complex undertaking that is impacted by a variety of factors on a daily basis. Halton Healthcare continues to attract and recruit staff. However, there is limited availability of experienced healthcare workers available to recruit across Ontario and Canada.”
According to ONA, OTMH currently has over 260 nursing vacancies across the hospital.
In an interview with Oakville News, D. J. Sanderson, Emergency Room Nurse and ONA Vice-President for Region 3 said, “One of the real challenges we find, we haven’t had an emergency room closure or department closure at Oakville Trafalgar, but they really have these ‘silent closures.’”
Sanderson is referring to a situation where an emergency room is running with less staff than normal but serving the same number of patients requiring care. This results in certain pieces of the emergency department being closed.
“We know every time you add a patient onto an RNs workload, the risk of an adverse effect or even death, goes up by seven per cent,” said Sanderson. “So, we’re really worried about the situation out there at OTMH when Ford is saying that these internationally educated nurses are going to solve the problem.”
Bill 124, legislation capping public service wage increases to one per cent with no increase in benefits for three years, means that with inflation factored in, nurses are experiencing a significant pay cut.
Sanderson says this bill severely impacts the recruitment of new nurses as well as attempts to keep nurses at the end of their careers or bring back retired nurses. The latter two groups are integral to helping train new graduates and internationally educated nurses.
According to Jickling, “On occasion, we do partner with a number of agencies to provide additional resources when required, particularly when a patient needs a unique level of care.”
According to ONA records, last year, that translated into a total of 10,000 private agency nursing hours being billed at OTMH.
Typically, private nurses are paid two to two and a half times the rate of public nurses. Some agencies also pay private nurses a bonus for working an overnight shift. Then, there’s the agency’s fee.
Sanderson pointed out that often private nurses are unable to do the entire job they were hired for because there’s no orientation, no training; little to no supervision; and a lack of continuity.
The privatization of nursing not only costs taxpayers significantly more money, but it also pulls experienced health care workers out of the system, observed Sanderson.
Jickling believes it is difficult to determine the full impact of Ministry of Health-sponsored initiatives like the integration of internationally educated nurses, nursing students and students from other health disciplines, but Halton Healthcare is encouraged by these initiatives.