Brockville Registered Nurses Say Looming Job Cuts will Impact Patient Care
BROCKVILLE, March 24, 2015 /CNW/ - Registered Nurses (RNs) at Brockville General Hospital say they are increasingly concerned about the fate of patient care and services as the possibility of RN cuts looms.
"Our Brockville RNs note that short staffing is already a problem and they remain deeply concerned about the possibility of RN cuts, the possible closure of the Maternal Child Unit and the resulting impact on patient care," said ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN.
Haslam-Stroud said that Brockville General Hospital may be joining the dubious list of Ontario hospitals that are "putting patient care at risk, looking to cut RN positions to balance budgets at the expense of our patients' health outcomes. Across the province, our patients are paying the price for frozen hospital funding, as Cambridge Memorial Hospital and the Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario did last week," said Haslam-Stroud, RN.
"Brockville General Hospital's emergency department and ICU are regularly short of RNs, and tension is running high as the hospital struggles with its finances and concern mounts." Haslam-Stroud cites multiple scientific studies that show the consequences for patient outcomes when RN care is cut.
"Many studies have found that for every extra patient added to an average RN's workload, rates of patient complications and even death rise by seven per cent," she said. "Studies also show that patients suffer higher rates of ulcers, sepsis, shock, cardiac arrest, bedsores, blood clots and pneumonia."
Haslam-Stroud urges the community to protest ongoing RN cuts, both in Brockville and across the province. She notes that Ontario has the second-worst RN-to-population ratio in Canada.
ONA is the union representing 60,000 registered nurses and allied health professionals, as well as more than 14,000 nursing student affiliates providing care in hospitals, long-term care, the community, public health, clinics and industry.
Visit us at: www.ona.org; Facebook.com/OntarioNurses; Twitter.com/OntarioNurses
SOURCE Ontario Nurses' Association
Ontario Nurses' Association, Sheree Bond, (416) 964-8833, ext. 2430; cell: (416) 986-8240; [email protected]; Melanie Levenson, (416) 964-8833, ext. 2369; [email protected]
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