'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
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
Demand soars for solar eclipse glasses in Canada. Are they worth buying?
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.
Trump says Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and their religion
Former U.S. president Donald Trump on Monday charged that Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and hate 'their religion,' igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and Jewish leaders.
Toronto family doctor who called patient's body 'perfect' suspended for 3 months: tribunal
A family doctor in Toronto has been suspended for three months after a disciplinary tribunal found that he failed to follow proper protocols while examining a patient's breasts and made inappropriate comments about her body.
Freddie Mercury's home is on the market for first time since 1980 minus his 'exquisite clutter'
Freddie Mercury's sanctuary in London, where he lived the last decade of his life, is on sale for the first time in nearly half a century -- minus his "exquisite clutter."
'The lost season': Winter comes to a close as Canada's warmest on record
The warmest winter on record could have far-reaching effects on everything from wildfire season to erosion, climatologists say, while offering a preview of what the season could resemble in the not-so-distant future unless steps are taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.