Without nurses, where would we be?
When Afka Bokma arrived at Niagara Health’s Welland hospital by ambulance with chest pains, she was understandably worried she was having a heart attack. “At this age, it could be anything,” says the almost 80-year-old.
But from start to finish, Bokma felt she was in good hands. The hospital ran a battery of tests, and the nurses kept her calm and comfortable. When one noticed her shivering, she brought Bokma a blanket and asked if she needed anything else. Another noticed her Dutch name and chatted soothingly about her own family roots in the Netherlands and her trip there.
It turned out Bokma just had a bad case of acid reflux. “I apologized for taking their time,” she says. But the nurse put her mind at rest, telling her she had a legitimate reason to be there.
Bokma’s experience isn’t unusual. During National Nursing Week, it’s important to remember that at some point in our lives — from the time we arrive wailing from the womb to the time we leave this world — most of us will have contact with a nurse. They’re there for all the major milestones: birth, immunizations, ear infections, broken bones, major and minor illnesses and, frequently, for our deaths.
The backbone of the health-care system
“You see nurses everywhere across all sectors of health care,” says Erin Ariss, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA). They’re the first folks you encounter when you arrive at the emergency department, and they’re there, throughout our hospitals, administering meds and caring and advocating for patients.
But that’s not all they do. Nurses man blood clinics, public health offices, community care teams and long-term care homes. And increasingly, says Ariss, they assist in surgeries, diagnose, order and interpret tests, prescribe medications, and perform medical procedures (as nurse practitioners).
Ariss, who was an ER and ICU nurse for 20 years before joining the ONA, operated autonomously in her job. “I was the person in the resuscitation rooms, administering CPR, defibrillating your heart and giving you medicines to save your life,” she says.
Nurses, she points out, are the backbone of our health-care system. And right now, they’re in need of our support.
Stopping up the gaps
When the pandemic slammed into this country back in 2020-21, our health-care system was already stretched to the limit under the pressure of an aging population, a rise in chronic conditions and a growing prevalence of mental health and addiction issues, among other things. On top of that, says Ariss, “for years, we have been understaffed and underfunded.”
But COVID-19 pushed the system over the edge. “It was the perfect storm,” says Ariss, and nurses and other front-line health-care workers bore the brunt of the impact.
They did their best to cope. When COVID-19 deepened the opioid crisis in Ontario, outreach nurses took to the streets to reach a population badly in need of care and support. And in the midst of the pandemic, nurses found ways to look after more patients than ever, often by working extended hours, taking less vacation time and changing the way they delivered care.
“But all those things were to our detriment,” says Ariss. The result has been rising levels of nurse burnout and an exodus from nursing. Ontario currently has a historic number of unfilled nursing jobs (we need 25,000 new nurses just to bring us to the same per capita ratio as the rest of the country). And those nurses who remain on the job have experienced a rise in overtime hours and illness-related absenteeism.
Even worse, patients facing extended wait times for health services sometimes take their frustration out on front-line workers, including nurses.
Nurse-led solutions
Instead of blaming nurses for an ailing health-care system, contends Ariss, we need to support them in finding solutions by addressing the problems that are pushing them out the door. “It can’t continue the way it is now,” she says.
Profit-driven care has siphoned money away from the public system, Ariss points out, and nurses’ wages have been suppressed, even as inflation has soared. The result has been a staffing crisis, “particularly in long-term care and home care, which were chronically understaffed to begin with,” Ariss says.
Among other things, Ariss believes profit has no place in delivering care, and she contends there should be staffing ratios in place requiring institutions to have a minimum ratio of nurses to patients. “We know that the provincial government has underspent in their health-care budget by billions of dollars,” says Ariss. “They need to invest and focus on nursing.”
You can help our nurses’ cause, she says, by emailing or calling your member of provincial parliament and city counsellor to let them know how much you value our public health-care system and our nurses. “Nurses have been at your bedsides when you were sick, or when your children were born, or a loved one passed away,” she says. “Now it’s time for Ontarians to show up for their nurses.”
Nurses have been at your bedsides when you were sick, or when your children were born, or a loved one passed away. Now it’s time for Ontarians to show up for their nurses.
— Erin Ariss, president, ONA