‘Critical’ PSW shortage hits home for Thorold senior
Peter Grampola just wants to go home.
But despite recovering from a serious illness that brought the 68-year-old Thorold resident to Greater Niagara General Hospital nearly five months ago, he has no choice but to remain there.
“I’m not too happy with the way things worked out,” he said.
His wife Nancy said Peter was rushed to hospital in early December after becoming severely ill.
“He’s lucky to be alive because everything went on him,” she said. “He had congestive heart failure, a partially collapsed lung, cellulitis, his body was filling up with fluid. It was just horrible. Thank God he made it through. I don’t know how he did, but he did.”
About three months ago, she said, Peter’s physicians gave him the green light to return home — as long as home care services are available.
But the couple have been waiting for home care services, ever since.
“There’s nothing available,” Peter said.
The problem is a provincewide shortage of personal support workers.
Peter can take care of himself, for the most part.
He needs two PSWs for about an hour and a half in the morning to help him get out of bed and ready to face the day, and two PSWs for about an hour at night.
“He’s lost so much strength from what he’s gone through, he can’t transfer himself as he used to,” Nancy said. “This is the hold up.”
Dealing with her own health issues, Nancy said she can no longer assist her husband as she used to.
“If I hurt myself, what’s going to happen then?” she asked. “It’s just been a real struggle. I don’t know what to do next?”
Peter isn’t alone.
Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network Trish Nelson said as of Friday afternoon there were five people at Niagara’s three acute care hospitals waiting for home care services to be in place before they can be discharged home.
She could not discuss Grampola’s case specifically, due to privacy concerns, however, she said
the LHIN “will always work collaboratively with patients and families to develop a care plan that supports the needs of the person once they return home from hospital.”
“For a person’s safety and continued recovery at home, the necessary supports must be in place for the person’s discharge from hospital to move forward,” she added.
Although the LHIN is responsible for contracting out home care service to providers, Nelson would not respond to questions about the shortage and referred questions about PSWs to service provider organizations themselves.
“The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network … holds contracts with various service provider organizations that employ PSWs to provide home care services.”
Sue VanderBent, chief executive of Home Care Ontario — an umbrella group for Ontario’s home care providers — called the PSW shortage “critical.”
“We are hearing this more and more. We really need good PSWs. We want to hire more PSWs, and we are trying to make our system more hospitable to PSWs in terms of their work schedule … as well as their salaries,” she said, adding the organization has been lobbying for better working conditions.
VanderBent said the PSW shortage was previously limited to sparsely populated areas.
“For us to start seeing this happening in denser populations like cities, I think it’s a sign that obviously our home care system needs to be more robust,” she said. “Homecare Ontario has been saying this for a long time now.”
Despite the “crisis,” VanderBent said the extent of the shortage is unknown.
Asked how many PSW are needed to address the needs across the province, VanderBent reached out to her contacts at the Ministry of Health in the hope of finding the information.
“Unfortunately, they’re telling me they don’t have any analytics about this,” she said. “I guess it’s a tough number to get at.”
Peter has recently been able to return home once or twice a week on doctor-approved day passes.
After hospital staff help get him ready in the morning, he rides Niagara Region’s specialized transit to his home in Port Robinson, but he needs to return to hospital each night to again rely on hospital workers to help him out of his electric wheelchair and back into his bed.
“It’s great to have him home and it’s great for him, eh Peter?” Nancy asked.
Peter nodded.
“I’d like to get home twice a week, because really once they get me out of bed I’m just spinning my tires until they put me back to bed. Why not be at home?”
Niagara Centre MPP Jeff Burch is advocating on behalf of his constituents, hoping to help the Grampolas obtain the care they need.
Peter “cannot continue to languish in hospital,” Burch wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
Meanwhile, the shortage of home care services is costing taxpayers substantially more.
Information provided on the Homecare Ontario website estimates the cost of a hospital stay at about $842 daily.
In comparison, home care services cost about $42 per day.