Hospitals are becoming increasingly dangerous places for nurses to work, according to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and Unifor, which jointly represent thousands of front-line staff working in hospitals across northern Ontario. Sault Area Hospital says efforts are underway to address workplace violence. “Based on the findings of the environmental risk assessment, an action plan consisting of several safety measures has been developed to improve safety in the Emergency Department,” SAH spokeswoman Brandy Sharp Young wrote in an email to SooToday on Wednesday. Union officials discussed patient violence against nurses in a virtual presentation Tuesday. “I think hospitals need to do a better job of creating an environment where people who are there to receive health care know that if they are violent in any way, there will be serious consequences and they may be put in a situation where they are denied care until violence is not part of the equation,” Andy Savella, director of health care for Unifor, told SooToday from Thunder Bay on Wednesday. “I don’t think anything should be out of the question, including enhanced screening of patients,” Savella said of making hospitals safer places to work for nurses, doctors and staff. “We can’t get into people’s bags. These are their personal things, so you become very vulnerable if the patient is agitated and has brought in a stick or a dirty syringe needle or a knife, especially if you have your back to the patient. It could lead to serious consequences,” said Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, speaking from Toronto. Unifor says violence by some patients — already fatigued by COVID, mental health and addiction issues or other forms of stress — may arise out of frustration with long wait times for care, which Unifor blames on a shortage of nurses. That shortage, Unifor says, can be blamed on the provincial government. “Much responsibility goes to the underfunding of the hospital sector by the provincial government. He’s the one who needs to step up and provide some funding and join the conversation about what can be done. We simply cannot have hospitals as places where there is violence,” Savella said. “It’s definitely a personnel issue. The wage restraint legislation — House Bill 124 — certainly doesn’t help,” Richer said. Bill 124, introduced by the provincial government in 2019, caps salary increases for nurses at one per cent per year. Nursing officials said that has led some overworked nurses — also fearful of workplace violence — to leave the profession and has also discouraged younger college and university students from considering a career in nursing. Bill 124 needs to be revisited as inflation soars, Richer said. “What we do know is that hospitals … are increasingly toxic and dangerous workplaces, where violence and violence against a workforce that is over 90 per cent female in the case of hospitals in northern Ontario, not only happens tolerated, but unfortunately, largely ignored. “, the unions wrote in a previous statement. “This sharp rise in physical and sexual violence against women and racially motivated attacks comes against a backdrop of severe unprecedented staff shortages and vacancies in our hospitals.” “Staff is a problem. We see a high level in skeleton wards where there are many vacancies on each floor during a shift and patients are waiting longer. People have less patience for it. If we know a patient might be behaving aggressively, we’d like to go with two nurses, but there just aren’t enough staff. The government needs to allocate more money to staffing these units,” Richer said. “In July, staff at Sault Area Hospital were attacked by a patient who threw an oxygen tank and made threats. In the fall of 2021, several staff members at Lake of the Woods in Kenora resigned from the hospital because management said that it was a 300 per cent increase in staff harassment,” the unions say. Richer said reports of workplace violence don’t always find sympathy from hospital administrators. “Hospital administrators have policies, but we found that those policies have no teeth. Often, healthcare workers who have been victims of violence have been brought in and questioned and feel that they are the ones responsible for the violence. What comes out of their manager or supervisor is ‘what did you do to cause this act?”’ “The general public, talking to them, are really surprised at what’s going on and if we don’t talk about it, it’s never going to be fixed.” Richer said an email her union sent to Premier Doug Ford and the new health minister – Sylvia Jones – requesting a meeting to discuss the problem of workplace violence has not yet been acknowledged. “Our members feel let down.” In addition to better pay and adequate staffing, Richer said nurses need protection from whistleblowers. “We have many members who have been injured on the job and are afraid to speak up for fear of being fired because of hospital media policies.” SooToday has reported on violent incidents at the Sault Area Hospital in the recent past. “The action plan is currently in various stages of implementation at our hospital,” said Sharp Young “These measures include remodeling access to the ED core, line of sight improvements, additional CCTV cameras, policy and process improvements (violence flagging, development of safety plans, safety drills and mock drills), personal panic buttons for healthcare workers and training and safety training for staff and physicians. This work is done with ED staff and doctors, the hospital’s Security Team and other key agencies such as SSM Police Services and SSM Paramedic Services.’ “At Sault Area Hospital, we take all incidents of violence seriously and work to reduce incidents of violence at our facility. Incidents of violence can still happen regardless of our efforts. Violence of any kind is not tolerated at our facility and incidents of such behavior will result in SAH taking appropriate action, which may include removal from our facility and/or prosecution,” Sharp Young wrote.
