'Titanic' staffing crisis leaving at least 14 Ontario hospital units shut down ahead of long weekend
The intensive care unit at a hospital in Bowmanville will be temporarily closed amid a “significant staff shortage,” alongside more than a dozen other Ontario hospitals that are expecting to reduce beds and relocate care ahead of the long weekend.
An Ontario nursing union told CTV News Toronto at least 14 hospitals will be impacted.
“Long weekends always have an increased visit to emergency rooms, so there'll be further staffing issues, further burnout issues,” Ontario Nurses’ Association President Cathryn Hoy said on Thursday afternoon.
At the centre of the closures is a staffing crisis that Hoy said she can only compare to the “Titanic.”
“That's how serious it is,” she said. “I don't even know if there's words anymore for it.”
Hoy says that Bowmanville is a community that can’t afford to lose 12 intensive care unit (ICU) beds.
But in a statement, Lakeridge Health told CTV News Toronto that they had to make the “difficult decision” to temporarily close their ICU and relocate patients to Ajax Pickering and Oshawa hospitals.
“We recognize the impact of this temporary relocation on patients and their families. This decision was not made lightly,” Lakeridge spokesperson Sharon Navarro told CTV News Toronto.
Emergency rooms in Wingham and Listowel will also be closed for parts of the long weekend.
Hoy said these closures are the result of nurses leaving the profession in “droves.”
Birgit Umaigba, an Ontario emergency room nurse, said she has witnessed this with her own eyes. Just yesterday, the ICU she was scheduled to work at shutdown.
She said two more colleagues told her they were prepared to leave the profession, adding to the list of over a dozen she’s recently seen walk away from the profession to work at Boston Pizza and Costco, some with decades of experience.
The most recent Statistics Canada data illustrates the severity of the situation. Almost one in four nurses said they planned on changing or leaving their job in the next three years.
A spokesperson for Ontario’s minister of health said Sylvia Jones was unavailable for an interview and instead shared a statement.
“Like many other jurisdictions around the world, Ontario’s health system faces pressures due to the challenge of maintaining the required staffing levels."
While Hoy said it’s “too late” for a quick fix, she said repealing Bill 124, which caps a nurse’s salary increase at one per cent, is a start.
The bill was introduced by the Ford government in 2019 as a way to “ensure that increases in public sector compensation reflect the fiscal situation of the province,” the government said at the time.
But Hoy said repealing the bill is the only way to retain nurses and give them much needed hope.
"It'll be a sign of hope so that people will not continue to quit. That finally, finally they'll be recognized and that we're going to do something for them."
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6976926.1721883767!/httpImage/image.png_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.png)
DEVELOPING Alberta's request for federal assistance approved after fast-moving wildfire hit Jasper National Park: Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on social media that Ottawa has approved Alberta's request for federal assistance after a fast-moving wildfire hit Jasper National Park and its townsite late Wednesday.
Jasper mayor says alert system to be reviewed after message 'glitch'
More than 25,000 people have been displaced from Jasper National Park since wildfires started to threaten the picturesque corner of Alberta Rockies on Monday, but the mayor of its namesake municipality says not everyone received an evacuation alert when it was sent out.
Canada's premiers forced to confront escalating climate change-related disasters
Many of Canada's provincial and territorial leaders remained consumed by climate change-related natural disasters that have only escalated since they met for meetings in Halifax last week.
Biden explains why he ended re-election bid in Oval Office address
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered a solemn call to voters to defend the country's democracy as he laid out in an Oval Office address his decision to drop his bid for reelection and throw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
Unclaimed bodies are piling up in Newfoundland. A funeral director blames the government
A funeral director in St. John's says the bodies piling up in freezers at Newfoundland and Labrador's largest hospital likely belong to people whose loved ones couldn't get enough government help to pay for a funeral.
U.K. police officer suspended after video appears to show a man being kicked in head
A British police officer was suspended from all duties Thursday after a video was posted on social media that appeared to show an officer kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the floor of a terminal at Manchester Airport.
Norad intercepts Russian and Chinese bombers operating together near Alaska in apparent first
The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers flying near Alaska Wednesday in what appears to be the first time the two countries have been intercepted while operating together.
Barrie-Innisfil MPP 'blacked-out' and crashed car into window of child care centre
Staff at a Barrie child care centre say they are frustrated by what they call a local MPP's inadequate response after a car crashed through a window in one of the toddler rooms.
Monday breaks the record for the hottest day ever on Earth
Driven by oceans that won't cool down, an unseasonably warm Antarctica and worsening climate change, Earth's record hot streak dialed up this week, making Monday the hottest day humans have measured.