Workplace injuries hampering care for seniors
A third of employees are affected and that must change, says Jennifer Lyle.
For the first time in history, Canada’s seniors outnumber children. With this comes increasing demand for seniors’ care services. Over the next 20 years, it is estimated the nursing workforce will need to increase by 3.4 per cent to meet demand for continuing care services; however, the current workforce growth rate is approximately one per cent. The B.C. Ministry of Health has established a target of recruiting 900 new health-care aides over the next five years to ensure service targets are met for the continuing care sector.
Recent surveys by SafeCare B.C. of the long-term care and home care and support sectors have identified significant staffing challenges. More than 87 per cent of home care respondents indicated their organization is short-staffed, and 70 per cent of long-term care sector respondents indicated the same. Of the positions most often faced with shortages within these organizations are occupations pertaining to direct client care. Health-care aides, home support workers, and nurses were most commonly cited. At the same time our population is aging, so too is the workforce of health-care workers.
This trend is expected to worsen as more workers retire and leave the sector.
But what if we could find more than 320 nurses and health-care aides — already trained, experienced, and working in the sector — in one year?
This brings up a critical fact: nearly a third of the ministry’s five-year target for health-care aides (265 full-time positions) and 57 nursing positions in the continuing care sector are already filled by trained, experienced staff — but they are unavailable due to workplace injuries.
It may not be realistic to aim for an injury rate of zero, but considering that the injury rate for long-term care workers and home-care workers are four and two times the provincial average, respectively, there’s certainly room for improvement. Even reducing the injury rate by half in these sectors would result in more than 160 full-time positions among nursing staff and health care aides. Despite this, health human resource strategies have thus far failed to identify workplace injuries as a key factor in staff retention. This needs to change.
Chronic staffing shortages have a direct impact on the quality of care provided, and are linked to poorer client outcomes regarding pressure ulcers, weight loss, and functional ability. Staffing shortages also negatively affect the health-care professionals who seniors and their families rely on. Staffing shortages are associated with higher staff turnover, higher rates of burnout, and negative effects on workplace health and safety practices. In SafeCare B.C.’s recent surveys, 71 per cent of home-care and 74 per cent of long-term care respondents reported that staffing shortages had an extreme, moderate, or somewhat of an effect on workplace safety. These all lead to the same outcome: workers leaving the sector.
As the health and safety association for the continuing care sector, SafeCare B.C. is dedicated to making workplaces safer for staff and seniors alike. Through Safe-Care B.C., the continuing care sector has invested more than $2.7 million in workplace safety since late 2013. We’ve seen a decrease of 16 per cent in the number of workdays lost due to injury. Or, put another way, we’ve seen more than 12,300 workdays put back into care.
But we still have a long way to go. If the continuing care sector is to address its staffing shortage challenges, the sector’s stakeholders need to recognize the role workplace safety plays. On May 30, at the B.C. Care Providers conference, SafeCare B.C. will make the case for investing in workplace safety as part of a larger human resources retention strategy before several hundred representatives from the continuing care sector. SafeCare B.C. is also ready to work with government and key continuing care stakeholders to ensure that health human resources strategies recognize the role workplace safety plays in addressing staffing shortages.
Ultimately, whether we are successful in addressing the staffing shortages in continuing care will hinge on our success in both recruiting new staff and keeping the ones who are already working in the sector safe and healthy. It’s time to recognize the role that workplace injuries play in staffing shortages. It’s time for a new strategy.