Representatives from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) and CUPE met with reporters at the Peterborough Public Library on Thursday (January 4th) to provide details regarding a recently released Nanos poll of Ontario hospital workers commissioned by the unions.

The Nanos poll, which was also made public on January 3rd included responses from 774 hospital workers across the province, paints a dire picture of the working conditions in Ontario’s healthcare system.

Sharon Richer, secretary treasurer of OCHU, reiterated many of the points she and David Verch, vice-president of OCHU, made during a press conference at Queen’s Park in Toronto yesterday (January 3rd). The Peterborough media briefing is the first in a series of engagements both Richer and Verch are making across Ontario to build awareness for the growing crisis of retainment and recruitment in Ontario’s health sector.

Joining Richer and Verch was Lisa Barker, an RPN at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) and Vice President of CUPE Local 1943 which represents over 700 full time and part time healthcare workers at PRHC.

Despite only receiving a 3% response rate, Richer was confident that the responses paint an accurate picture of the experiences of workers in Ontario hospitals and sought a balance between rural, urban, and northern hospital settings. Despite this, she did admit that such a large geographical basis and a relatively small sample makes it difficult to tease out any statistical variations or insights for comparisons across regions.

However, she was confident that the results spoke to universal experiences in the sector, especially around the some of the implications for worker mental health.

“The poll results confirm that a negative impact of working conditions on your mental health 62% of them say they are exhausted, 49% say they have anxiety and 41% dread going into work, and 44% of them are having trouble sleeping,” Richer stated. “These findings are nothing short of alarming.” 

Many of the issues that the poll highlights related to burnout and retention were re-iterated by Barker as she outlined the “hectic and confusing” nature of working at PRHC over the past few years. 

“It’s very overwhelming,” she said. “We’re short staffed, the need is high. It’s a constant flux, due to the nature of [patients’] health.” 

Providing local insight into the problems being faced by workers across the province in regards to understaffing in hospitals and issues related to recruiting and retaining workers, Barker reported that there are currently 153 job vacancies in her bargaining unit alone at PRHC, and “over 200” at the hospital overall.

“It's a bit of a revolving door to be honest,” Barker told reporters. “In some areas, we get them hired, we get them trained, and they leave because it's so stressful, because we’re short, because the hours are long.”

Since 2020, staffing levels across Ontario hospitals have only increased by 0.4% according to stats Canada, which has led to OCHU and CUPE to call for the hiring of an additional 60,000 new hires in the sector over the next four years.

When asked about the Ministry of Health’s response to the poll which included the fact the province had created 15,000 new nursing jobs and touted its efforts in opening jobs up to nurses with out-of-province or international credentials, Richer noted while it’s true, these numbers from the province require deeper context. 

“When you talk about bringing in nurses from around the world, these nurses are not trained like our Canadian nurses, they still need a lot of mentorship and guidance,” Richer explained. “What this poll is deeply telling us is that those experienced nurses that are going to provide the guidance and the mentorship, they're already at a breaking point.”

Indeed, even as the province has been successful in hiring thousands of new nurses, the poll shows that once they get on the job, the work fails to live up to the expectations and many are forced to leave soon after starting.

“People are coming in and they're going, ‘Okay, this is not what I signed up for!’ The workloads are crushing, they're getting burnt out, there's not enough people to work,” Richer said.

Richer also provided additional details Issues related to compensation, including the fact that healthcare wages in Ontario have failed to keep up with industry standards. 

“In 2017, the year before the [Ford] government was elected, healthcare wages were 2.4% above all industry averages, and by 2022 healthcare wages were 5.1% below all industry averages,” she said.

While not explicitly mentioned, both Richer and Verch have previously discussed the impact of Bill 124, a 2019 Ford government Bill which capped public sector wage increases at 1% which has since been found unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice due to its infringement on Ontarian’s Charter Rights to free association which includes collective bargaining.

The hope is that this tour of the province will help to shine a light on the gravity of the situation facing hospital workers and to build momentum to address the crisis as it reaches a breaking point for so many in Ontario. 

“We are counting on the public support to put pressure on the government,” Verch said. “We've been underfunded in this province for decades. Healthcare workers in Ontario have done more with less and it's shameful that per capita is the lowest amount spent on healthcare than any other province in the country and we are the richest.”