Nurses should have one place of employment

Re Our nursing crisis is a public crisis, Oct. 13 The nursing profession was in crisis long before the pandemic. It has been in crisis since Mike Harris eliminated thousands of nurses to pay for tax cuts.

In 2017, I spent three-and-a-half months in hospital and live-in rehab due to extreme complications from chemotherapy. I would not be alive without the expert and compassionate care from all those nurses at both the hospital and rehab.

I found out that every single one of my nurses was pulling down shifts at other hospitals to make up a full week’s work. Why do they not have full-time hours at one hospital?

The current Conservative government is paying for its tax cuts to the wealthy, in effect, by not increasing nurses’ wages to even cover the rate of inflation, making the nursing crisis even worse.

If the nursing profession isn’t fulltime work, then what is?

It’s long past time to pay nurses properly with appropriate hours of work, pay and benefits.

Paul Kahnert, Markham