NEWMARKET
– An independent panel of nursing experts has made 28 significant
recommendations to improve patient care at Southlake Regional Health
Centre’s Emergency Department, where Registered Nurses (RNs) had been
raising professional responsibility concerns for several years.
"The
Independent Assessment Committee (IAC) accepted the evidence and
concerns brought forward by Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) members
and have made strong recommendations to improve patient care in the
province’s third-busiest Emergency Department,” notes ONA President
Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN. “The recommendations address what our nurses
know are insufficient staffing and dangerous nurse-patient ratios that
have left our dedicated RNs unable to provide quality care.”
The
recommendations relate to eight practice concerns identified by
Registered Nurses within the Emergency Department. The practice concerns
included insufficient staffing within the Department, the roles and
responsibilities of various positions as well as the reliance on and use
of agency nurses.
The
IAC panel conducted its investigative hearings over three days in
September. Both ONA and the employer made presentations to the panel. In
its presentation, ONA highlighted the more than 100 workload report
forms from the RNs about staffing and practice issues. Once the hearing
concluded, the panel wrote a report that outlined the following
recommendations, including:
- The need to add at least five permanent full-time RNs to the roster.
- The need to increase RN hours in the Emergency Department.
- The need to move to an all-Psychiatric Emergency Nurses’ model in the Mental Health Wellness area.
- The need to maintain a patient-to-nurse ratio of 5:1 for admitted patients and a 1:1 ratio for critically ill patients during surge.
“Our
hope is that we can work with Southlake’s management to implement
without delay the IAC’s recommendations,” said Haslam-Stroud. “Hospital
management must acknowledge the serious risk to patient care and take
action to ensure Emergency Department RNs can provide safe, high-quality
patient care to this important patient population.”
ONA
is the union representing 65,000 registered nurses and health-care
professionals, as well as 16,000 nursing student affiliates, providing
care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the
community, clinics and industry.
