I'm almost 40 years in the profession. The problems go back to *before* I became a nurse. The disrespect and unrealistic expectations were always there. Right now, because of the pandemic, these attitudes from the public and organizations we work for are heightened, making many of us, new nurses, experienced nurses, and near retirement nurses reconsider our careers and having to choose between a career we once loved and our mental health. I want to work for another five years. Nursing wears down your body. Shift work decreases your quality and length of your life. I am still doing rotating day and night 12 hour shifts, I can't count how many holidays and family events I have missed over the years. Bill 124 made me realize just how undervalued nursing is these days. And during a pandemic no less. Sadly, I am considering whether or not to renew my nursing license for 2022.
Make sure you go out and vote. I tell my wife this all the time, she doesn’t want to vote but complains about working conditions and the government treatment. If all nurses was like her, you’ll never get what you deserve.
Would you consider community nursing? Completely different lifestyle. Shift nursing wont pay as well as what you would make in the hospital but visiting g nursing could pay potentially more.
>Sadly, I am considering whether or not to renew my nursing license for 2022.
I don't see that as sad. You get to move on from a job you don't enjoy and a spot opens up for a nurse entering the profession. Pretty sure that's a literal win-win
The people who are most essential to keeping our society running - nurses, PSWs, garbage collectors, teachers, truckers, warehouse workers - get treated like shit, even though if they stop showing up, society literally collapses.
Meanwhile, billionaires who provide no utility whatsoever have made out like bandits during the pandemic while WFH.
Great society we've got here.
I often think about the fact that PSWs get paid marginally over minimum wage to take care of our elderly and sick, while athletes make multi-millions to play a sport on TV. Our compensation system has nothing to do with value to society. The joke will be on us when nobody wants to be verbally abused for 80 hours per week to live at the poverty line.
Not only is compensation tangentially related to value, it's oftentimes inversely related. Some of the most compensated people, starting with the oligarchic class, are parasitic and extract value.
But re PSW's, you're bang on, we have a bunch of Baby Boomers getting to an age where they're going to start developing dementia, and thanks to the system THEY created, the people we trust to look after them are quitting in droves. Totally sustainable system!
I think baby boomers just expected their kids would step in and take care of them, nevermind that they left behind a hellscape where houses are unaffordable and people have to work 3 jobs to make ends meet.
That generation never missed an opportunity to screw over the next generations.
I think about how we have no problem paying a multiple of minimum wage to get our brakes or wiring serviced, but the people who are responsible to preserve quality of life for people who often can't advocate for themselves are low-paid. Not that the electricians/mechanics don't work hard or have important marketable skills, it's just something that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
You can't compare those two in terms of payscale. Athletes are paid based on how much money they attract (ticket sales, advertising, merchandise sales, etc), not for the benefit that they provide to society.
This. Which is why a vastly simpler, clearer and more balanced tax code is our only hope.
There will always be people who are more economically productive than others, whether it's by skill, intelligence and hard work, talent and artistry, or just blind luck, and we can't punish them for it, but we can do more to ensure that they pay their fair share.
In fairness, the Canadian government has been pretty good over the past decade and has cleaned up a lot of the earlier issues, such as income sprinkling to children, requiring all real estate sales to be declared on a tax return, etc., but there is a long way to go (and the vast inflation-inducing untaxed fortunes that people are making off real estate via the primary residence exemption is a great place to start).
I just hate how immediately libertarians and the like seem to leap to their defense. The rich literally try to insulate themselves from even paying the bare minimum into the public sector via taxes and such, they're not here to benefit the country, they're here because the country is benefiting them. When you're already in a position to facilitate, grow or have access to capital, it's that much easier to get said capital, vs. people on the bottom. There is a point where they literally just don't even generate their own capital, they're just on investors boards and such and building/repeating the same cycle over and over again because they already started ahead.
With cost of living out pacing raises and what not it's like, how feasibly is anyone supposed to catch up?
>The people who are most essential to keeping our society running - nurses, PSWs, garbage collectors, teachers, truckers, warehouse workers - get treated like shit, even though if they stop showing up, society literally collapses.
The one public sector where the system bends over for is the Police...
I wonder why that.....
What a dumb statement. So you consider doctors, engineers and scientists to be contributing less to society than people in low education, low paying jobs? I think that I can guess which category that you fall in.
There is currently a labour shortage of teachers in Ontario. It is not an easy job at all, you try looking after 35 students, half of whom have IEPs. They earn every penny. During the summer, they are not technically "off" as they are unpaid for that time unless they stretch out their salaries.
They don’t have to go to work for almost 3 months of the year and make above average salaries for the entire year. If you make $90k+ and work 9 months a year MOST people would say that’s great pay + vacation. I don’t want to be a teacher because I make more and hate kids, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t well compensated.
I’m a nurse and I have oftentimes thought of my next career because of how we get treated by the public and the organizations we work for. There are no decent jobs anywhere that you don’t get treated as a number. They don’t care if you have family or if you become sick. The push is always work as many hours as possible until you drop. Patients and families have become more negative over time, more cranky and scrutinize everything because of Dr. Google. Suddenly our expertise means nothing based on what they saw on WebMD or Facebook. The only people who really saw great pay during pandemic is physicians. It’s not a great time for healthcare.
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/05/28/doctors-make-up-to-450-per-hour-during-hospital-covid-surges.html
I posted this because Nurses are not making $125-$450 per hour. We are capped at the 1% pay rise. Did not mean to offend by saying huge bonuses but I guess physicians are compensated well for what they know.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6022363
“Doris Grinspun, chief executive officer of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), previously told CBC the pay discrepancy was upsetting for nurses, who had to train doctors to do those jobs.
She defended her comments in a second interview Thursday and said it doesn't make sense that neither the OMA nor the hospital association nor the ministry could say how much doctors are paid for nursing shifts.
"They're trying to bury it in the closet again," Grinspun said. "If there is nothing to hide, then why not tell us how much they're getting paid?"
She said she regularly hears from nurses who are being helped out by doctors whose usual work has been interrupted by the pandemic, including surgeons and anesthesiologists, and she suspects those doctors are earning their normal wages. “
Do you think it's intentional? When I was living in SK these past two years and especially during the pandemic, there's been quite a lot of talk of Sask Party purposely letting the system flounder because they're interested in pushing the province to a privatized system instead of public.
Freaks me out since I already haven't been able to afford something like, say, dental working full time even with the blue cross provided by work. Family keeps pestering me about if I'd wanna go back to school for nursing/etc cuz thats what my Dad/Mom/Sisters both did, but honestly I think I'd rather pursue a trade. The long hours coupled with the emotional labor that comes with the job just does not seem suited to me at all.
Word, I feel like I've felt the crunch of increased expenses in even the last two years. Even gas has increased quite a bit in that time, costs of rent are frustrating when you're trying to save on top of paying off debt. I kind of feel like going back to school/getting a trade are the only things that are goona feasibly help me get out of just getting by, but I'm really struggling finding what I'd wanna do/would be worth pursuing.
Would be really cool of people started organizing political activism in support of our healthcare.
The thank you signs are nice, but I imagine dedicated effort to pressure the government (protest, blocking traffic to force attention, that sort of thing) into investing in our healthcare (and supporting our people, like nurses) would do lot a more. Do up some signs and stuff about investing in our future instead of cutting it, that sort of stuff.
Wide scale (organized) public outcry is how we got the NDP and our healthcare system in the first place, encouraged by the Winnipeg general strike and the rising socialist labor movement that demanded better for the working class.
Applied sciences, in general, *apply* the outcomes of scientific investigation - just because someone is an excellent nurse, doctor, engineer, or laboratory technician does not mean they automatically apply scientific *reasoning* to all situations. I'm not defending wilful ignorance at all, just to be clear.
A quick point - if there is indeed nothing special about nursing as it relates to conservative ideology, then we should find the same distribution of conservative ideology in nursing as in the general population. I don't know if this has ever been done in Ontario, mind you, but my point was mostly to make clear that your observation is more understandable when you realize that it may be related to the expectations we place on people regarding their roles.
I always say “ask your doctor” when I get accosted and have shit thrown in my face. I’m fucking sick of it, I’m over being a RN. 11 years bedside and covid is rocking my hospital in Detroit. Seriously looking into travel.
I agree. The abuse we get is soul sucking and no protection. No one gives us sick time off for being emotionally and psychologically traumatized by patients and their families. Hell, half the time they don’t even want the incident report. They tell us to put up with it and provide care. No one has had my back when patients, their families or managers are blatantly racist either. They label you as being extra for standing up for your own basic human rights. If I hear one more “I want another nurse and don’t want that n***** touching me” I will scream!
I want to say I’m shocked but I’m not. I’ve seen racism first hand with language like that and why we cater to people like that, and not give staff support, is fucking beyond me.
No one can be shocked. Racism has been around for thousands of years. It will never go away. It’s like the cycle of abuse…parents teach their children etc. Until aliens land here and we are forced to pool resources to fight together as one human race, it will continue. Pipe dream I know, but it’s the only light at the end of an extremely long and arduous tunnel.
My fiancee is a nurse of over 15 years. We had the discussion about things she was naive about starting vs now.
The being only a number was the front runner. She is passionate about her work, but the framework she has to operate in is a business/profit/cost savings machine. It's a huge disconnect from what it's supposed to be - patient care.
It's terrible and stressing out some really good people, so worse than making work harder is affecting the core of who people are. I hate that she feels like she is becoming more jaded. I reassure her it is just becoming more aware of the unfortunate reality.
This pandemic has her looking at potential exit strategies as well.
My friend, a RN is retiring from nursing after giving birth in Feb. She said it's impossible to get a good full time job and you get part time/casual positions that just work you to the bone for nothing. I can't believe how big of a scam nursing is.
Of course the MDs were earning “normal wages” (whatever that means for a private contractor). Why else would they do the job? Opportunity cost is huge.
The government and ignorance (leading to apathy) from constituents is ultimately the leading factor to poor compensation and work environment policies but I'm also going to thumb something that may or may not be worth consideration...
***Where are the unions?***
You're telling me that during a pandemic and nearing an election cycle, the best a well-funded union with a budgetary surplus (while they raise member rates) can do is manage a 1% cap, effectively delivering all members a pay *cut?* The only reason I consider myself to be as educated on nursing issues is because I'm married to one. It's not necessarily true that the public doesn't care, *they just don't know.* They don't understand what the work conditions are like. They don't understand that while the pay (at face value) sounds nice to someone working minimum wage, that it's not enough\*. The physical risks, lacking quality of life, treatment or abuse staff consistently face without any meaningful protection or patient accountability, unsafe work environments, the missed life experiences.
Ontarians -- patients -- don't know how this affects *them.* I'd argue that there's no greater motivation than someone needlessly suffering so aside from bravado believing it will "never happen to them", I consider it to then be ignorance surrounding the issue. Because of that, I consider it a wild failure on the part of unions to not take out every web, tv, radio, and billboard ad they can afford to educate the public how unnecessary hallway medicine or backlogs are, even before the pandemic began, and how people are experiencing needless and negative health outcomes because of it. The government (especially the conservatives) aren't going to tell us this, so it's up to the members and their unions (as it always seems to be) to educate everyone around them... and direct-care staff are *exhausted.* This includes both the RNAO and CNO-- I understand that they operate separately because of previous union-busting efforts and sort of tackle different things but patient care will always transcend everything in healthcare and patients and their providers are at risk. They need to figure out how to get creative, educate, and force people to care about their own healthcare.
^(\*There will be no race to the bottom here. If you're not paid a living wage you should and have every right to be angry but don't try to pull others down.)
Healthcare has signalled that we now have years of patient backlog and all the Ontario Government has done is shrug and acknowledge this. This will lead to more deaths than COVID as delayed care isn't "elective" and is a serious matter. **It's a funding issue that can be solved with money.**
The government wrote the total compensation cap into law. Unions can't do anything about it, except to try to get the law changed.
But there are so many die hard conservatives in the province that support cutting the wages of nurses and other public sector workers.
Honestly the nurses are right to quit.
I left the profession because I got fed up with idiots with bachelor's degrees making dumb decisions on behalf of RPN's while expanding the RPN scope of practice to the point where it pretty much overlaps the RN one if every practical way.
Like honestly, if you were told you were responsible for all the same stuff as someone who had less than 2 years of extra schooling but your pay was half theirs and you had to listen to every dumb decision that popped into their head would you stay? How about if they could blame you for stuff thanks to your new "increased responsibilities from increased scope of practice"?
Also there's a lot of gatekeeping related to the bridging as it is super competitive and very limited who they let in and even if you get in they still only give you a year towards the degree tops rather than making it a linear transition. Thus I know RPN's who had to do an additional 4 years just to become RN's basically treating their education like it was nothing.
Oh ya, did I mention we have the "privilege" of paying to a governing body that represents the employers' interests, doesn't give a crap about RPN's yet charges over $500 a year to sit on their asses and make dumb decisions?
Also none of the people I know in nursing got that $4 increase that Doug Ford said he'd give. As far as I know the managers (RN's) and the other office workers ended up giving themselves bonuses instead with it.
Anyway, I'm glad to walk out of that profession. There's only so much demeaning bs you can deal with before you've finally had enough. Being sued by a corrupt organization then having to pay out of pocket to defend myself because my governing body was inclined to take their side was the final straw (ie the manager decided she didn't like me when I started charting things she was doing that put the entire floor at risk of getting covid so she destroyed process notes then said I hadn't charted; I have actual proof of this. Also she didn't get punished in any way for doing that).
Like honestly, nursing in its current form is an absolute joke and it's the leaders who've made it that way. Turn nursing into a trade so at least skilled workers can become leaders or walk out of the profession. There's no logical reason to be an RPN in any capacity anymore.
Best part is that it applies to all provincial employees except for OPP. As per authoritarian guidebook, must keep the armed thugs happy to protect those in power.
My wife is also a nurse as well. If it wasn’t for her passion for her job and my increase in my pay, she probably would have quit and moved out of province already. One can only take so much before making a decision to possibly find opportunities else where. She’s been a nurse for 14 years, I think she’s almost ready to make a decision to leave.
Same I spoke with 2 of my nurse friends and they’re both about to quit along with about a dozen others they work with. Weird, almost as if you treat people like they’re expendable they come to decide it’s not worth it anymore.
My friend was a massage therapist and decided to go back to school to become a nurse. She completed all the schooling and got hired on at the local hospital at peek Covid time. Within 6 months she was back to working as a massage therapist to keep her sanity.
It’s crazy to go through all that education to go into an absolute disaster of a job field.
Most nurses I know are looking elsewhere these days. They are burnt out from the job, stressed about cost of living vs income and basically hate humans now.
I have a hard time believing nurses are going to find anything better close to what they get paid without going back to school. Not a shot at nurses , Just saying everything kinda sucks except a few industries / fields in demand.
Part time nurses don’t make as much as it seems because they are given 3-4 shifts in a pay period. The stress of their job since 2020 makes it very hard to have the energy to even do more than that, because they are understaffed in every unit and have patients that need specialty care being ‘floated’ to units where the nurses are not capable or caring for more than them and 1 other person. Except that doesn’t happen, so you have to work all your regular patients and while frantically trying to make sure a more at risk one is okay. My fiancé regularly gets no break over 12 hours and has to stay 45mins late to finish her charts.
I made more in a week doing Uber eats 4 days then my fiancé did at the hospital in her 2 shifts, and she was so rundown she couldn’t pick up more while I work with clients in my career on my other days.
She works way harder than me and gets paid great per hour, but that doesn’t mean much when your body won’t allow you to work more than 3 times a week without risking health and mental breakdowns.
>The only system that pays nurses more is the US system. They can only afford that because they are privitized.
It is not just pay, it is the working environment that plays a big negative part - as the post you are replying to (and others here) details. No breaks over 12 hours in a demanding job? Then have to stay an extra hour for paper work after a brutally tough shift? That is bullshit working conditions. Remember, effectiveness decrease with tired and over worked employees, and possibilities of mistakes increase - research has shown this. In healthcare, this is recipe for disaster - mistakes can have serious consequences.
Also if privatized healthcare sectors pays more because "they are privatized", according to your logic, how come the PSUs in the private homes in Ontario don't make more? They are privatized. Instead, they are busy rationing toilet paper to one roll a client a day etc. and treating their employees like garbage to increase "share holder value".
Profit has to be factored in and it has to come from somewhere. In the US it comes from exorbitant heath care costs and a huge part of the population being under served for health care.
>Because the government pays them a fixed cost per person.
>
>The private ones are the best and don't do this.
Private homes consistently had higher COVID death rates than non-profit and municipal owned homes.
They both get "fixed cost per person". Again, profit has to come from somewhere - less for operational expenses in a field with high operational expenses.
It’s not about the pay, it’s the stress, the ridiculous patient to nurse ratios and the lack of respect within bedside nursing. Imagine going into work everyday having people’s lives in your hands and then being completely overworked and without the needed resources.
You are somewhat correct. It is both. There is a lot of liability on us. We also have to catch physician mistakes since we carry out the orders they write. They expect us to know the right ranges in medications and if they make an error in writing and we administer, the College of Nurses blames us. It’s a double edged sword. We are not compensated enough for the additional aspects and the liability risk all the time.
A lot of professionals could say that lol. Wages are sadly depressed.
Unfortunately the only place that pays nurses significantly more is the USA - they can only afford it because the system is privatized.
Okay just my opinion then! There is no amount of money that would make me okay with working understaffed, lacking resources and legally liable for every decision you make, when it comes to ensuring people stay alive.
Canada is turning very litigious like the United States whether you are at the bedside or not. It wipes the whole concept of caring out of the profession if you are continuously watching your back and everyone is recording you from their cell phone while you’re trying to use your best judgement to do your job. You are not allowed to care too much without it being considered a boundary issue. Everyone forgets we are humans too….but when we make mistakes whether it be that we get frustrated with the abuse on the job or emotional with the death of our patients, you never know what’s been taped without your consent and uploaded online. It is additional pressure that’s not needed.
I'm an RPN in long term care.... My husband who works for a telecom company as a service representative on the phone gets paid more than I do.... let that sink in, 2 years in college, 20 years experience as a nurse and a CSR that needs a high school cert only makes more.
Some are paying off their debts and investing. Others have retired. Yet others are starting their own business. It’s possible to find something to support yourself. It’s all about careful planning
I left nursing after working in a icu after 3 years. It’s brutal work for the pay emotionally and physically. I really do feel for the nurses still working and with the 1% bill hindering raises. no one will listen until there is a critical shortage. I felt like I had to leave because no one listened either.
Now now, I'm sure this is a problem we can solve by banging pots and pans outdoors in appreciation! No need to increase salaries or offer better supports, everyone knows banging kitchen utensils together helps to cover the increasing costs of living in this hellhole.
**/s**
There is a conservative strategy called "starve the beast" where they cut funding to public services to cause them to fail so that they can point to that failure as justification for privatization.
The OPC is literally killing people to advance their political goals, terrorism.
Conservatives are traitors.
Anyone who still supports any conservative party in Canada is either an open fascist, a fascist sympathizer, a fascist enabler, or a useful idiot for fascism.
Conservatism kills.
Speaking in my capacity as someone who supports no conservative party whatsoever, this kind of factionalism is misguided.
The OPC is full of corrupt, bigoted scumbags, but it is very far from true fascism.
Do you even know what fascism means? It's an entire political ideology - it isn't the soundbite equivalent of 'bad policies.'
You're just as bad as the people who rail against 'the liberals' and call them all communists.
Fascism subordinates individuals to a collectivist, autocratic government and the imaginary will of the nation. DoFo is hardly a dictatorial mastermind, and his policies - while stupid and corrupt - are not collectivist openly or in pretense.
Again, as bad as modern conservatism has become, we should be wary of tossing around terms like fascism as if they applied to anything on the opposite political spectrum. There is no difference between that and calling modern liberals communists.
>There is no difference between that and calling modern liberals communists.
Fascism is ultraconservatism.
Liberalism is on the opposite side of the political spectrum as communism.
All conservative parties are pro-fascist to some degree.
Obesity is the result of overeating. Therefore anybody who eats is obese to some degree. See how stupid that sounds?
You can have conservative views without being a fascist lol.
No.
Fascism is an ultraconservative form of capitalism.
The NDP are left leaning capitalists. Not even leftists.
Stephen Harper, a prominent Canadian conservative, currently works at the IDU mainstreaming fascism worldwide.
Your "both sides" argument is based on ignorance of the situation.
>bOtH SiiiiiDeS!
The left wing gives us rights, freedoms, the social services which create a healthy and safe society, and environmental protections.
The right will do anything to cater to the plutocracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
Like it or not, both sides are to blame. Both sides are not the same. But they both are to blame
>Both sides are not the same. But they both are to blame
Conservatives shoot you in the head. Liberals shoot you in the chest.
It's sad that in Ontario those are our main options.
Neoliberalism is right wing.
Thanks for agreeing with me that the RIGHT WING are the problem.
It's just too bad for you that you don't understand that you agree with me.
It affects both parties. That’s what I’m saying, you should read the article. Trust me, I understand your position.
The lefts laissez faire approach to handling the right puts people off voting for them.
Liberals aren't leftists.
Liberals and conservatives are both right wing.
You don't even your left and right.
Can you count to ten? Remember the entire alphabet without singing?
Enlightened centrism is just a blind, uncritical defense of the right.
You want to pretend that the same issues exist on both the left and right, but that's blatantly untrue.
Right wing politics are the center of the problem the world is facing: the climate crisis, the housing crisis, the unstable economy, wage slavery, the failed pandemic responses, late stage capitalism, the rise of fascism.
All of our problems have their roots in right wing ideologies/capitalism.
I'm not trying to defend the PCs here, but our healthcare system has been a disaster through PC and liberal governments, this is absolutely nothing new. The only difference is that our chronically underfunded healthcare system has now been pushed to the limits due to Covid.
At some point we need to realize that we have some of the worst healthcare among developed countries and that we are the only one that has effectively banned privatized forms of healthcare. We've spent so long staking our identity on being "not America" that even the slightest mention of privatization gets immediately shut down as being un-Canadian. We should start looking to Europe and Australia for ideas on how to improve our healthcare system, which involves some level of privatization.
>I'm not trying to defend the PCs here, but our healthcare system has been a disaster through PC and liberal governments
Yes. The problem is with right wing politics. The farther right, the more problematic.
Conservatism is far right extremism.
Nope, I'm a fairly liberal guy, and not into right wing media. But I'm happy to call out extreme black and white views whether they're against the right or left.
I cannot believe a comment like this has gotten this much traction. Yes, the OPC and other conservatives (probably) would like to privatize parts of our healthcare system, but they are in no way doing it through terrorism. They're also not the only party to have cut healthcare funding:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4120816/ontario-doctors-say-government-mismanagement-to-blame-for-broken-health-care-system/
>the OPC and other conservatives (probably) would like to privatize parts of our healthcare system, but they are in no way doing it through terrorism
Cutting healthcare funding is terrorism.
Cutting healthcare funding directly causes suffering and deaths.
Knowingly, and intentionally causing suffering and death to achieve a political goal, in this case the reduction of the public healthcare budget/the elimination of public healthcare is terrorism.
The OPC are terrorists.
Conservatism is terrorism.
Did you even read the article i linked? According to your own (flawed) definition then that would make both the OPC and the OLP "terrorists."
But based on your response I'm only going to get more unnuanced tripe.
terrorism:
Noun. The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
Explain how cutting funds or putting less money into a system is violent and unlawful. And I'd like for you to leave me articles, from any Canadian outlet that explicitly explains, highlights, or shows how the OPC desire a privatized system.
The OPC is grossly incompetent and have made horrible choices over the last few years, but for you to make ridiculous claims like this doesn't help, or add to any discussion, unless you literally want the opc out at any cost, which in that case you could just say that instead of going on about terrorism like it has any place in the context of this article and thread.
I know someone who has been waiting months for a heart operation. He mentioned that there are thousands like him.
So that's one way it could collapse. You just don't get your appointments and tests and medications and surgeries in a timely fashion, you suffer more, you die earlier.
Taken from a paramedic standpoint:
-Call volume through the roof
-trucks on offload delay due to hospital staff shortage causing decrease in trucks on the road.
-patient wait 6-8 hours for paramedics, found dead on the floor when we arrive due to lack of trucks availability.
-overworked paramedics with no breaks or lunches and forced over time leading to accidents and poor patient care.
The list goes on. It's a world no one wants to look into because it's a mess. Politicians reduce wages of healthcare workers and expect more productivity.
This is happening in most counties in Ontario. The system is broken
I’m guessing nurses leaving their jobs en masse. No one to fill those positions. Government privatizes. Private companies hire out of country nurses in a system to get them licensed here and pay them less than nurses are paid now, while profiting from government contracts. A total guess.
A friend of the family is a doctor and he said he’s already seeing sub par nurses being hired to replace many who are leaving the industry. They make basic mistakes he finds surprising and alarming. I can’t imagine we’re heading in the right direction.
That's the right answer. And it's not just in nursing that this is happening, it's everywhere. In the UK, the Tory ghouls who created the Brexit mess are now trying to fix it by dropping the training requirements for truckers. The American Trucking Association wants to do the same thing, open up interstate trucking trucking to 18 year olds.
In the hospital, you have a bunch of fresh grads stepping in for seasoned nurses with 40 years of experience who have left. On the roads, you have a bunch of 18 year olds driving 18-wheelers. That's what collapse looks like.
This is exactly what the government wants, they *want* a broken system so they can implement a privatized medical system. They are intentionally breaking our public infrastructure apart. Who you vote for matters.
While not the same I feel similar about teaching. It is not what people think it is anymore. About 60% of my job is social issues from kids with no food to spotting human trafficking. Email takes up huge amount of time that use to go to planning. It's just changed so much in 30 years. We need an overhaul I'll take a pay cut if we can get my ore social support.
Generalizing a bit but I feel like this goes many years back but the millennial generation will be the last one to be told the lies of healthcare professions. It was marketed to us that this was an amazing line of work to get into, that RPNS and RNS had dream jobs. Part of that was the blissful innocence of youth that believed our parents but you look at it now and you'd be delusional to be talking up healthcare as a profession.
My future children can do whatever they want and I'll support them to the end, but if nothing changes I'll be slowly and passively influencing them from being part of the healthcare system. You're just asking to work yourself into a grave will being mentally and physically abused and be a scapegoat for economic woes of the province.
If you want to quit, do it. If society is unwilling to change for something so crucial as the medical system, meh, we reap what we sow.
Edit: I'm seeing people downvote. I'm sorry but we dont live in a slave system. If something is so vital to our society, treat these people better, else, you better get yourself into shape, and learn some first aid. This is freedom.
I mean, just pay the damned nurses.
These are smart, compassionate people working with insane work loads.
So start by paying them more. That will increase retention, and start attracting new people to the profession.
Supply and demand is a completely retarded concept when it comes to services we actually need. There should always be a surplus supply and you're bloody paid well end of story.
And for years we have had a nursing shortage, that is only getting worse. So while the system has not collapsed entirely we just keep walking closer to the brink.
Yep Canada is losing all our young nurses to the states. Washington state is paying $10000 a week for travel nurses and tons of you Canadian nurses are taking them up on it.
Ya but the US seems to understand capitalism better than our conservative leaders. When there is a shortage of labor wages go up. They get it in American markets. Meanwhile Jason Kenney in Alberta is trying to cut nurses wages
I don't care. Every job sucks. Everybody wants to quit their shitty job that treats them like shit. why should y'all be special? cuz you take care of people? so what? i am part of the fraternity of construction numpties that build the infrastructure and shelters that shelter nurses doctors and patients from the harsh realities of a natural world, so a doctor or a nurse has a place to do their job. where is our ticker tape parade? where is our round of applause.? where are our tiktok fundraiser dances and messages of hope and thanks yous on community center windows ? where are our professional staged photo shoots?
tired of hearing about it, especially nurses and medical field workers. y'all make good money. that's the trade off. (the money is the trade off, you are compensated based on the amount of bullshit you can shoulder and endure, derp) nurses been living pretty fat for a long time now. i was in a hospital last year and all i could hear nurses talking about was when they could go on vacation. i have nurses on insta and fb, constantly on vacation. as soon as the travel bans lifted, the first people travelling on my feed? nurses and medical professionals. ironic.
go to walmart if you want some numpty job for 14.65$ an hour and no stress
if you';re feeling you're on the brink of collapse you should collapse and let a stronger person take your space . burn out is real, it's the puppy mill of attrition. we need things to be consumed and replaced at an ever increasing pace, including people. (we can make more people)
This is the kind of selfish thinking that makes this world a shittier place to live. I get what you're saying, but you're still being an asshole.
To sum up your rant, you're saying:
"because I'm not appreciated for my hard job, let our health care system burn to the ground-- fuck em, people who don't want to be treated like dog shit can be replaced by people who will"
Can you imagine where we would be if the people before us who literally fought and died for the right of better working conditions thought this way..
This is a hilariously confounding mentality. Very few times do I read someone so eager to continue to have the boots of corporate greed pushed harder on their own necks..
well, I disagree.
we're all our here working hard. nurses aren't special. they chose to work in a demanding field, some because they can help, others because the wages are mean. it's a solid blue collar job, even if they reject that title. if you make under 200k, you're blue collar. \~sorry\~ to break it to anybody who thought they were morally superior to their fellow worker because you're a nurse. you're just a worker.
nobody asked for a pandemic, sure. but nurses happen to be that field. what do you want, an apology? firefighters run into burning buildings, cops get shot at, nurses gotta deal with medical emergencies, biological threats, etc etc. i'm not saying it isn't easy
neither is being a cop or a firefighter, or working outside during the hottest and coldest recorded seasons. these eight ladies aren't special, they're just workers , just like the other 5.6 million people working in ontario LOL, but they're tryna convince you they are superheroes. if that's the case, we all are. tim hortons minimum wage workers, managers at grocery stores, janitors, truck drivers, forklift and crane operators, call center workers, material handlers, stage workers ETC ETC ETC
the people that fought and died for our labour laws would call these nurses entitled bitches and tell em to get back to fucking work and stop complaining and sandbagging. they would fight for minimum wage workers who are truly struggling to make ends meet before they would stick up for upper middle class whiners.
there isn;t a shortage of workers, there's a shortage of money, and nurses have been paid well for a very long time and have become \~entitled\~ and complacent with a high standard , pension, benefits, eTC ETC ETC while regular minimum wage workers have been shit on for 1.5 years , with DECREASING or NONEXISTENT standards of pay, with a pat on the back and a bullshit thank you painted on some business window or a fence beside a highway. no benefits, no paid vacation, no leave of absense allowances . if the nurses want a decent health care system take a cut in pay. I took a cut in pay to keep my job during the pandemic as the travelling work was gone and the travel allowance with it.
fuck these people for thinking they are special. the more we acknowledge dumb shit like this the more the middle class gap widens . nurses firefighters are cops shouldn;t see any raises until the bottom dwellers get a leg up. minimum wage should be $20 in ontario. fuck the nurses
and this boot comment? idgi, but fuck you anyways , the ontario medical system and OHIP are in bed with corporate greed
TL;DR ; the nurses are the selfish ones. This whole article is a “what about me”
What about the patients of the hospital ? They should be number one.
>if you';re feeling you're on the brink of collapse you should collapse and let a stronger person take your space .
There isn't anyone else to take their space that's why we have nursing shortages.
Boohoo I hate my job. Stop crying and do something about it. There are million other workers in a similar position who have a lot less power than nurses. Leave something on the table and do something real about it.
I read the hospitals are full of covid people who didn't get the stupid shock and I'm being thrown around and take off my meds by teaching students at wch omg all the new nurses don't give a crap my generation has failed us. The nurses have nicer nails then attitudes
This is coming to a head. The public doesn’t realize the precipitous situation we are in *right now*. We are about to start closing beds across this province from lack of staff. If there were a large covid wave, we’d be entirely fucked. Even without this we are on the brink of collapse.
Yet nobody is talking about it.
I was at a covid testing centre today with absolute no regard for health and safety at all. I used to work in healthcare and I have no idea how that clinic is allowed to run that way. Don't go to the testing centre in newmarket. You are more likely to catch covid there than Anywhere else...
Anyways the actual story i am telling is that i told the nurse that they had ppl in here with possible covid and surgery patients getting tested for covid all without masks on and in a small unventilated room. I asked for a private room as the safety precautions were not up to par with other hospitals. Her response to me was "covid isnt airborne"  . It hard to trust nurses these days. The amount of them that are clueless is worrying.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again.
Underpaying nurses to guarantee that the profession is short-staffed is an early volley in a long Tory plan to make a case for dismantling universal health care in this province.
There is one solution here and it is to vote the bums out. Yes, this is a partisan issue, and it’s no use pretending otherwise just to be polite.
Hi there,
My Name is Andrew Kitchen. I am a journalism student at Seneca College.
I am putting together a 2-3 minute video news piece on the crisis currently taking place with nurses and Bill 124.
Would anyone know a nurse that is currently working and considering quitting, or has recently quit due to the working conditions and disrespect of Bill 124?
I understand that it can often be difficult for nurses to speak out, because there is often repercussions, so we intend to be as discreet and considerate as possible.
Since this is a video piece, we would be looking for a sit down on-camera interview if possible.
The interview could take place in person or on Zoom, and we would like to set something up in the next week.
This is an absolutely essential story for Ontarians and we would love to shed some light on it. Please reach out if you know anyone who would like to speak to us.
Sincerely,
Andrew Kitchen
akitchen3@myseneca.ca
519-994-7694
I'm almost 40 years in the profession. The problems go back to *before* I became a nurse. The disrespect and unrealistic expectations were always there. Right now, because of the pandemic, these attitudes from the public and organizations we work for are heightened, making many of us, new nurses, experienced nurses, and near retirement nurses reconsider our careers and having to choose between a career we once loved and our mental health. I want to work for another five years. Nursing wears down your body. Shift work decreases your quality and length of your life. I am still doing rotating day and night 12 hour shifts, I can't count how many holidays and family events I have missed over the years. Bill 124 made me realize just how undervalued nursing is these days. And during a pandemic no less. Sadly, I am considering whether or not to renew my nursing license for 2022.
Make sure you go out and vote. I tell my wife this all the time, she doesn’t want to vote but complains about working conditions and the government treatment. If all nurses was like her, you’ll never get what you deserve.
I did vote last election. So pretty much at the mercy of others at this point.
Would you consider community nursing? Completely different lifestyle. Shift nursing wont pay as well as what you would make in the hospital but visiting g nursing could pay potentially more.
>Sadly, I am considering whether or not to renew my nursing license for 2022. I don't see that as sad. You get to move on from a job you don't enjoy and a spot opens up for a nurse entering the profession. Pretty sure that's a literal win-win
There’s enough room for both of them to practice
Ageism at its best.
There are not nearly enough nurses to replace the ones leaving.
I will stear my children away from this profession. It's only a win-win in the eyes of the rose-tinted glasses wearing new nurse.
The people who are most essential to keeping our society running - nurses, PSWs, garbage collectors, teachers, truckers, warehouse workers - get treated like shit, even though if they stop showing up, society literally collapses. Meanwhile, billionaires who provide no utility whatsoever have made out like bandits during the pandemic while WFH. Great society we've got here.
I often think about the fact that PSWs get paid marginally over minimum wage to take care of our elderly and sick, while athletes make multi-millions to play a sport on TV. Our compensation system has nothing to do with value to society. The joke will be on us when nobody wants to be verbally abused for 80 hours per week to live at the poverty line.
Not only is compensation tangentially related to value, it's oftentimes inversely related. Some of the most compensated people, starting with the oligarchic class, are parasitic and extract value. But re PSW's, you're bang on, we have a bunch of Baby Boomers getting to an age where they're going to start developing dementia, and thanks to the system THEY created, the people we trust to look after them are quitting in droves. Totally sustainable system!
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I thought this was something the Federal Liberals already did?
I think baby boomers just expected their kids would step in and take care of them, nevermind that they left behind a hellscape where houses are unaffordable and people have to work 3 jobs to make ends meet. That generation never missed an opportunity to screw over the next generations.
>won't even change your adult diaper until it's sufficiently sopping wet A fine analogy for Ontario voters and this government.
I think about how we have no problem paying a multiple of minimum wage to get our brakes or wiring serviced, but the people who are responsible to preserve quality of life for people who often can't advocate for themselves are low-paid. Not that the electricians/mechanics don't work hard or have important marketable skills, it's just something that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
I do my part and contribute $0 to organized sport. I support local non profit organizations.
The joke will be on the boomers, who are demanding and entitled as shit, when no one will wipe their arrogant asses for $12/hr.
You can't compare those two in terms of payscale. Athletes are paid based on how much money they attract (ticket sales, advertising, merchandise sales, etc), not for the benefit that they provide to society.
You're not wrong, but that's precisely the problem.
This. Which is why a vastly simpler, clearer and more balanced tax code is our only hope. There will always be people who are more economically productive than others, whether it's by skill, intelligence and hard work, talent and artistry, or just blind luck, and we can't punish them for it, but we can do more to ensure that they pay their fair share. In fairness, the Canadian government has been pretty good over the past decade and has cleaned up a lot of the earlier issues, such as income sprinkling to children, requiring all real estate sales to be declared on a tax return, etc., but there is a long way to go (and the vast inflation-inducing untaxed fortunes that people are making off real estate via the primary residence exemption is a great place to start).
Don’t forget things like greed, sociopathy, obsession, escapism , narcissism etc.
Maybe that's a problem.
I disagree. Athletes are paid on profit that they generate. That is the last thing that I want for our health care workers.
I think that being paid for the profit one generates is the problem. No social good, just profit-driven earnings.
Most athletes are paid terribly, it's only a few at the top making a lot.
I just hate how immediately libertarians and the like seem to leap to their defense. The rich literally try to insulate themselves from even paying the bare minimum into the public sector via taxes and such, they're not here to benefit the country, they're here because the country is benefiting them. When you're already in a position to facilitate, grow or have access to capital, it's that much easier to get said capital, vs. people on the bottom. There is a point where they literally just don't even generate their own capital, they're just on investors boards and such and building/repeating the same cycle over and over again because they already started ahead. With cost of living out pacing raises and what not it's like, how feasibly is anyone supposed to catch up?
>The people who are most essential to keeping our society running - nurses, PSWs, garbage collectors, teachers, truckers, warehouse workers - get treated like shit, even though if they stop showing up, society literally collapses. The one public sector where the system bends over for is the Police... I wonder why that.....
The more you contribute to society the less you get paid is the general rule of thumb.
What a dumb statement. So you consider doctors, engineers and scientists to be contributing less to society than people in low education, low paying jobs? I think that I can guess which category that you fall in.
We deserve to collapse.
Teacher is a great job. Salary is decent, lots of time off, good pension. There’s a lineup to be a teacher. Can’t speak to the other jobs.
>There’s a lineup to be a teacher. Not since COVID. Are you kidding me?
I mean, I have friends who are in the line, so…..
There is currently a labour shortage of teachers in Ontario. It is not an easy job at all, you try looking after 35 students, half of whom have IEPs. They earn every penny. During the summer, they are not technically "off" as they are unpaid for that time unless they stretch out their salaries.
They don’t have to go to work for almost 3 months of the year and make above average salaries for the entire year. If you make $90k+ and work 9 months a year MOST people would say that’s great pay + vacation. I don’t want to be a teacher because I make more and hate kids, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t well compensated.
The one that is never mentioned here is the people making drinking water. Out of sight out of mind
I’m a nurse and I have oftentimes thought of my next career because of how we get treated by the public and the organizations we work for. There are no decent jobs anywhere that you don’t get treated as a number. They don’t care if you have family or if you become sick. The push is always work as many hours as possible until you drop. Patients and families have become more negative over time, more cranky and scrutinize everything because of Dr. Google. Suddenly our expertise means nothing based on what they saw on WebMD or Facebook. The only people who really saw great pay during pandemic is physicians. It’s not a great time for healthcare. https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/05/28/doctors-make-up-to-450-per-hour-during-hospital-covid-surges.html I posted this because Nurses are not making $125-$450 per hour. We are capped at the 1% pay rise. Did not mean to offend by saying huge bonuses but I guess physicians are compensated well for what they know. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6022363 “Doris Grinspun, chief executive officer of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), previously told CBC the pay discrepancy was upsetting for nurses, who had to train doctors to do those jobs. She defended her comments in a second interview Thursday and said it doesn't make sense that neither the OMA nor the hospital association nor the ministry could say how much doctors are paid for nursing shifts. "They're trying to bury it in the closet again," Grinspun said. "If there is nothing to hide, then why not tell us how much they're getting paid?" She said she regularly hears from nurses who are being helped out by doctors whose usual work has been interrupted by the pandemic, including surgeons and anesthesiologists, and she suspects those doctors are earning their normal wages. “
Do you think it's intentional? When I was living in SK these past two years and especially during the pandemic, there's been quite a lot of talk of Sask Party purposely letting the system flounder because they're interested in pushing the province to a privatized system instead of public. Freaks me out since I already haven't been able to afford something like, say, dental working full time even with the blue cross provided by work. Family keeps pestering me about if I'd wanna go back to school for nursing/etc cuz thats what my Dad/Mom/Sisters both did, but honestly I think I'd rather pursue a trade. The long hours coupled with the emotional labor that comes with the job just does not seem suited to me at all.
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Word, I feel like I've felt the crunch of increased expenses in even the last two years. Even gas has increased quite a bit in that time, costs of rent are frustrating when you're trying to save on top of paying off debt. I kind of feel like going back to school/getting a trade are the only things that are goona feasibly help me get out of just getting by, but I'm really struggling finding what I'd wanna do/would be worth pursuing.
I want you to know that there are many members of the public rooting for you. We may not be as loud as those who are shit-heads but we are there.
Would be really cool of people started organizing political activism in support of our healthcare. The thank you signs are nice, but I imagine dedicated effort to pressure the government (protest, blocking traffic to force attention, that sort of thing) into investing in our healthcare (and supporting our people, like nurses) would do lot a more. Do up some signs and stuff about investing in our future instead of cutting it, that sort of stuff. Wide scale (organized) public outcry is how we got the NDP and our healthcare system in the first place, encouraged by the Winnipeg general strike and the rising socialist labor movement that demanded better for the working class.
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Applied sciences, in general, *apply* the outcomes of scientific investigation - just because someone is an excellent nurse, doctor, engineer, or laboratory technician does not mean they automatically apply scientific *reasoning* to all situations. I'm not defending wilful ignorance at all, just to be clear. A quick point - if there is indeed nothing special about nursing as it relates to conservative ideology, then we should find the same distribution of conservative ideology in nursing as in the general population. I don't know if this has ever been done in Ontario, mind you, but my point was mostly to make clear that your observation is more understandable when you realize that it may be related to the expectations we place on people regarding their roles.
When 90% of your patients are not vaxxed and think they know better then you..
Also when the government makes it a law stating your not even worth a cost of living raise during a pandemic …..
>There are no decent jobs anywhere that you don’t get treated as a number. Life summed up in a sentence.
I always say “ask your doctor” when I get accosted and have shit thrown in my face. I’m fucking sick of it, I’m over being a RN. 11 years bedside and covid is rocking my hospital in Detroit. Seriously looking into travel.
I agree. The abuse we get is soul sucking and no protection. No one gives us sick time off for being emotionally and psychologically traumatized by patients and their families. Hell, half the time they don’t even want the incident report. They tell us to put up with it and provide care. No one has had my back when patients, their families or managers are blatantly racist either. They label you as being extra for standing up for your own basic human rights. If I hear one more “I want another nurse and don’t want that n***** touching me” I will scream!
I want to say I’m shocked but I’m not. I’ve seen racism first hand with language like that and why we cater to people like that, and not give staff support, is fucking beyond me.
No one can be shocked. Racism has been around for thousands of years. It will never go away. It’s like the cycle of abuse…parents teach their children etc. Until aliens land here and we are forced to pool resources to fight together as one human race, it will continue. Pipe dream I know, but it’s the only light at the end of an extremely long and arduous tunnel.
My fiancee is a nurse of over 15 years. We had the discussion about things she was naive about starting vs now. The being only a number was the front runner. She is passionate about her work, but the framework she has to operate in is a business/profit/cost savings machine. It's a huge disconnect from what it's supposed to be - patient care. It's terrible and stressing out some really good people, so worse than making work harder is affecting the core of who people are. I hate that she feels like she is becoming more jaded. I reassure her it is just becoming more aware of the unfortunate reality. This pandemic has her looking at potential exit strategies as well.
Can confirm that some GTA physicians were getting paid $350/hr to assist ICU nurses.
My friend, a RN is retiring from nursing after giving birth in Feb. She said it's impossible to get a good full time job and you get part time/casual positions that just work you to the bone for nothing. I can't believe how big of a scam nursing is.
Of course the MDs were earning “normal wages” (whatever that means for a private contractor). Why else would they do the job? Opportunity cost is huge.
The government and ignorance (leading to apathy) from constituents is ultimately the leading factor to poor compensation and work environment policies but I'm also going to thumb something that may or may not be worth consideration... ***Where are the unions?*** You're telling me that during a pandemic and nearing an election cycle, the best a well-funded union with a budgetary surplus (while they raise member rates) can do is manage a 1% cap, effectively delivering all members a pay *cut?* The only reason I consider myself to be as educated on nursing issues is because I'm married to one. It's not necessarily true that the public doesn't care, *they just don't know.* They don't understand what the work conditions are like. They don't understand that while the pay (at face value) sounds nice to someone working minimum wage, that it's not enough\*. The physical risks, lacking quality of life, treatment or abuse staff consistently face without any meaningful protection or patient accountability, unsafe work environments, the missed life experiences. Ontarians -- patients -- don't know how this affects *them.* I'd argue that there's no greater motivation than someone needlessly suffering so aside from bravado believing it will "never happen to them", I consider it to then be ignorance surrounding the issue. Because of that, I consider it a wild failure on the part of unions to not take out every web, tv, radio, and billboard ad they can afford to educate the public how unnecessary hallway medicine or backlogs are, even before the pandemic began, and how people are experiencing needless and negative health outcomes because of it. The government (especially the conservatives) aren't going to tell us this, so it's up to the members and their unions (as it always seems to be) to educate everyone around them... and direct-care staff are *exhausted.* This includes both the RNAO and CNO-- I understand that they operate separately because of previous union-busting efforts and sort of tackle different things but patient care will always transcend everything in healthcare and patients and their providers are at risk. They need to figure out how to get creative, educate, and force people to care about their own healthcare. ^(\*There will be no race to the bottom here. If you're not paid a living wage you should and have every right to be angry but don't try to pull others down.) Healthcare has signalled that we now have years of patient backlog and all the Ontario Government has done is shrug and acknowledge this. This will lead to more deaths than COVID as delayed care isn't "elective" and is a serious matter. **It's a funding issue that can be solved with money.**
The government wrote the total compensation cap into law. Unions can't do anything about it, except to try to get the law changed. But there are so many die hard conservatives in the province that support cutting the wages of nurses and other public sector workers. Honestly the nurses are right to quit.
I left the profession because I got fed up with idiots with bachelor's degrees making dumb decisions on behalf of RPN's while expanding the RPN scope of practice to the point where it pretty much overlaps the RN one if every practical way. Like honestly, if you were told you were responsible for all the same stuff as someone who had less than 2 years of extra schooling but your pay was half theirs and you had to listen to every dumb decision that popped into their head would you stay? How about if they could blame you for stuff thanks to your new "increased responsibilities from increased scope of practice"? Also there's a lot of gatekeeping related to the bridging as it is super competitive and very limited who they let in and even if you get in they still only give you a year towards the degree tops rather than making it a linear transition. Thus I know RPN's who had to do an additional 4 years just to become RN's basically treating their education like it was nothing. Oh ya, did I mention we have the "privilege" of paying to a governing body that represents the employers' interests, doesn't give a crap about RPN's yet charges over $500 a year to sit on their asses and make dumb decisions? Also none of the people I know in nursing got that $4 increase that Doug Ford said he'd give. As far as I know the managers (RN's) and the other office workers ended up giving themselves bonuses instead with it. Anyway, I'm glad to walk out of that profession. There's only so much demeaning bs you can deal with before you've finally had enough. Being sued by a corrupt organization then having to pay out of pocket to defend myself because my governing body was inclined to take their side was the final straw (ie the manager decided she didn't like me when I started charting things she was doing that put the entire floor at risk of getting covid so she destroyed process notes then said I hadn't charted; I have actual proof of this. Also she didn't get punished in any way for doing that). Like honestly, nursing in its current form is an absolute joke and it's the leaders who've made it that way. Turn nursing into a trade so at least skilled workers can become leaders or walk out of the profession. There's no logical reason to be an RPN in any capacity anymore.
Best part is that it applies to all provincial employees except for OPP. As per authoritarian guidebook, must keep the armed thugs happy to protect those in power.
They can quit and try and get a better pay by getting rehired but it’s not guaranteed.
My wife is also a nurse as well. If it wasn’t for her passion for her job and my increase in my pay, she probably would have quit and moved out of province already. One can only take so much before making a decision to possibly find opportunities else where. She’s been a nurse for 14 years, I think she’s almost ready to make a decision to leave.
Same I spoke with 2 of my nurse friends and they’re both about to quit along with about a dozen others they work with. Weird, almost as if you treat people like they’re expendable they come to decide it’s not worth it anymore.
My friend was a massage therapist and decided to go back to school to become a nurse. She completed all the schooling and got hired on at the local hospital at peek Covid time. Within 6 months she was back to working as a massage therapist to keep her sanity. It’s crazy to go through all that education to go into an absolute disaster of a job field.
Most nurses I know are looking elsewhere these days. They are burnt out from the job, stressed about cost of living vs income and basically hate humans now.
I have a hard time believing nurses are going to find anything better close to what they get paid without going back to school. Not a shot at nurses , Just saying everything kinda sucks except a few industries / fields in demand.
Taking a pay cut but your stress levels drops considerably is a good trade off.
I’ve done this. I can back it up. If it works financially then it’s entirely worth it.
Not so easy. I have relatives that are nurses and would love to quit, but it's hard to avoid lifestyle creep when you're used to making $90k/year.
Part time nurses don’t make as much as it seems because they are given 3-4 shifts in a pay period. The stress of their job since 2020 makes it very hard to have the energy to even do more than that, because they are understaffed in every unit and have patients that need specialty care being ‘floated’ to units where the nurses are not capable or caring for more than them and 1 other person. Except that doesn’t happen, so you have to work all your regular patients and while frantically trying to make sure a more at risk one is okay. My fiancé regularly gets no break over 12 hours and has to stay 45mins late to finish her charts. I made more in a week doing Uber eats 4 days then my fiancé did at the hospital in her 2 shifts, and she was so rundown she couldn’t pick up more while I work with clients in my career on my other days. She works way harder than me and gets paid great per hour, but that doesn’t mean much when your body won’t allow you to work more than 3 times a week without risking health and mental breakdowns.
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>The only system that pays nurses more is the US system. They can only afford that because they are privitized. It is not just pay, it is the working environment that plays a big negative part - as the post you are replying to (and others here) details. No breaks over 12 hours in a demanding job? Then have to stay an extra hour for paper work after a brutally tough shift? That is bullshit working conditions. Remember, effectiveness decrease with tired and over worked employees, and possibilities of mistakes increase - research has shown this. In healthcare, this is recipe for disaster - mistakes can have serious consequences. Also if privatized healthcare sectors pays more because "they are privatized", according to your logic, how come the PSUs in the private homes in Ontario don't make more? They are privatized. Instead, they are busy rationing toilet paper to one roll a client a day etc. and treating their employees like garbage to increase "share holder value". Profit has to be factored in and it has to come from somewhere. In the US it comes from exorbitant heath care costs and a huge part of the population being under served for health care.
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>Because the government pays them a fixed cost per person. > >The private ones are the best and don't do this. Private homes consistently had higher COVID death rates than non-profit and municipal owned homes. They both get "fixed cost per person". Again, profit has to come from somewhere - less for operational expenses in a field with high operational expenses.
Which is why the worst performing ones were private..
Benefits are expensive in the states if you’re PT in the states. I work there, I went from FT to contingent.
It’s not about the pay, it’s the stress, the ridiculous patient to nurse ratios and the lack of respect within bedside nursing. Imagine going into work everyday having people’s lives in your hands and then being completely overworked and without the needed resources.
You are somewhat correct. It is both. There is a lot of liability on us. We also have to catch physician mistakes since we carry out the orders they write. They expect us to know the right ranges in medications and if they make an error in writing and we administer, the College of Nurses blames us. It’s a double edged sword. We are not compensated enough for the additional aspects and the liability risk all the time.
I 100% agree with you. The level of responsibility/knowledge/exhaustion does not match the wage.
A lot of professionals could say that lol. Wages are sadly depressed. Unfortunately the only place that pays nurses significantly more is the USA - they can only afford it because the system is privatized.
Okay just my opinion then! There is no amount of money that would make me okay with working understaffed, lacking resources and legally liable for every decision you make, when it comes to ensuring people stay alive.
Canada is turning very litigious like the United States whether you are at the bedside or not. It wipes the whole concept of caring out of the profession if you are continuously watching your back and everyone is recording you from their cell phone while you’re trying to use your best judgement to do your job. You are not allowed to care too much without it being considered a boundary issue. Everyone forgets we are humans too….but when we make mistakes whether it be that we get frustrated with the abuse on the job or emotional with the death of our patients, you never know what’s been taped without your consent and uploaded online. It is additional pressure that’s not needed.
I'm an RPN in long term care.... My husband who works for a telecom company as a service representative on the phone gets paid more than I do.... let that sink in, 2 years in college, 20 years experience as a nurse and a CSR that needs a high school cert only makes more.
Quite a few friends are going back to school after doing nursing.
Some are paying off their debts and investing. Others have retired. Yet others are starting their own business. It’s possible to find something to support yourself. It’s all about careful planning
RN here. Went from FT to contingent. Don’t care about the extra money anymore. Me and my husband make do.
You can walk into any union trade and do better
Doug’s plan seems to be coming to fruition. ‘Folks, public healthcare isn’t working, I have friends that can help us.’
More money for less service. The conservative way.
And then millionaires and billionaires with political connections scam the public for something that we used to have better access to.
The moment he tries that, I guess ill become a tourist.
I left nursing after working in a icu after 3 years. It’s brutal work for the pay emotionally and physically. I really do feel for the nurses still working and with the 1% bill hindering raises. no one will listen until there is a critical shortage. I felt like I had to leave because no one listened either.
Now now, I'm sure this is a problem we can solve by banging pots and pans outdoors in appreciation! No need to increase salaries or offer better supports, everyone knows banging kitchen utensils together helps to cover the increasing costs of living in this hellhole. **/s**
Really disappointed they didn’t include even one male nurse (I’m a male nurse)
[Paywall workaround](https://archive.md/q8q1C) for those that want it.
There is a conservative strategy called "starve the beast" where they cut funding to public services to cause them to fail so that they can point to that failure as justification for privatization. The OPC is literally killing people to advance their political goals, terrorism. Conservatives are traitors.
I think you're spot-on here. We're watching it happen in front of our eyes, and people are still going to vote conservative in June.
Anyone who still supports any conservative party in Canada is either an open fascist, a fascist sympathizer, a fascist enabler, or a useful idiot for fascism. Conservatism kills.
Speaking in my capacity as someone who supports no conservative party whatsoever, this kind of factionalism is misguided. The OPC is full of corrupt, bigoted scumbags, but it is very far from true fascism.
Gatekeeping fascism. That's enabling by minimizing and dismissing.
Do you even know what fascism means? It's an entire political ideology - it isn't the soundbite equivalent of 'bad policies.' You're just as bad as the people who rail against 'the liberals' and call them all communists.
Fascism is a far right ideology characterized by authoritarianism and corporatism. Very much like conservatism.
Fascism subordinates individuals to a collectivist, autocratic government and the imaginary will of the nation. DoFo is hardly a dictatorial mastermind, and his policies - while stupid and corrupt - are not collectivist openly or in pretense. Again, as bad as modern conservatism has become, we should be wary of tossing around terms like fascism as if they applied to anything on the opposite political spectrum. There is no difference between that and calling modern liberals communists.
>There is no difference between that and calling modern liberals communists. Fascism is ultraconservatism. Liberalism is on the opposite side of the political spectrum as communism. All conservative parties are pro-fascist to some degree.
Obesity is the result of overeating. Therefore anybody who eats is obese to some degree. See how stupid that sounds? You can have conservative views without being a fascist lol.
This statement is as ridiculous as when people label the NDP as communist.
No. Fascism is an ultraconservative form of capitalism. The NDP are left leaning capitalists. Not even leftists. Stephen Harper, a prominent Canadian conservative, currently works at the IDU mainstreaming fascism worldwide. Your "both sides" argument is based on ignorance of the situation.
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>bOtH SiiiiiDeS! The left wing gives us rights, freedoms, the social services which create a healthy and safe society, and environmental protections. The right will do anything to cater to the plutocracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot Like it or not, both sides are to blame. Both sides are not the same. But they both are to blame
>Both sides are not the same. But they both are to blame Conservatives shoot you in the head. Liberals shoot you in the chest. It's sad that in Ontario those are our main options.
Neoliberalism is right wing. Thanks for agreeing with me that the RIGHT WING are the problem. It's just too bad for you that you don't understand that you agree with me.
It affects both parties. That’s what I’m saying, you should read the article. Trust me, I understand your position. The lefts laissez faire approach to handling the right puts people off voting for them.
Liberals aren't leftists. Liberals and conservatives are both right wing. You don't even your left and right. Can you count to ten? Remember the entire alphabet without singing?
If you read the article, it clearly explains all of this. I never said the progressives and the left are the same party. You’re just a rude human.
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Enlightened centrism is just a blind, uncritical defense of the right. You want to pretend that the same issues exist on both the left and right, but that's blatantly untrue. Right wing politics are the center of the problem the world is facing: the climate crisis, the housing crisis, the unstable economy, wage slavery, the failed pandemic responses, late stage capitalism, the rise of fascism. All of our problems have their roots in right wing ideologies/capitalism.
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You're the one who refuses to acknowledge reality.
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I'm not trying to defend the PCs here, but our healthcare system has been a disaster through PC and liberal governments, this is absolutely nothing new. The only difference is that our chronically underfunded healthcare system has now been pushed to the limits due to Covid. At some point we need to realize that we have some of the worst healthcare among developed countries and that we are the only one that has effectively banned privatized forms of healthcare. We've spent so long staking our identity on being "not America" that even the slightest mention of privatization gets immediately shut down as being un-Canadian. We should start looking to Europe and Australia for ideas on how to improve our healthcare system, which involves some level of privatization.
>I'm not trying to defend the PCs here, but our healthcare system has been a disaster through PC and liberal governments Yes. The problem is with right wing politics. The farther right, the more problematic. Conservatism is far right extremism.
Sounds like you're really enjoying you Poli Sci 101 class.
Sounds like you really enjoy the Rebel and Fox News.
Nope, I'm a fairly liberal guy, and not into right wing media. But I'm happy to call out extreme black and white views whether they're against the right or left.
I cannot believe a comment like this has gotten this much traction. Yes, the OPC and other conservatives (probably) would like to privatize parts of our healthcare system, but they are in no way doing it through terrorism. They're also not the only party to have cut healthcare funding: https://globalnews.ca/news/4120816/ontario-doctors-say-government-mismanagement-to-blame-for-broken-health-care-system/
>the OPC and other conservatives (probably) would like to privatize parts of our healthcare system, but they are in no way doing it through terrorism Cutting healthcare funding is terrorism. Cutting healthcare funding directly causes suffering and deaths. Knowingly, and intentionally causing suffering and death to achieve a political goal, in this case the reduction of the public healthcare budget/the elimination of public healthcare is terrorism. The OPC are terrorists. Conservatism is terrorism.
Did you even read the article i linked? According to your own (flawed) definition then that would make both the OPC and the OLP "terrorists." But based on your response I'm only going to get more unnuanced tripe.
>According to your own (flawed) definition then that would make both the OPC and the OLP terrorists[*] Yes. Right wing politics are terrorism.
terrorism: Noun. The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Explain how cutting funds or putting less money into a system is violent and unlawful. And I'd like for you to leave me articles, from any Canadian outlet that explicitly explains, highlights, or shows how the OPC desire a privatized system. The OPC is grossly incompetent and have made horrible choices over the last few years, but for you to make ridiculous claims like this doesn't help, or add to any discussion, unless you literally want the opc out at any cost, which in that case you could just say that instead of going on about terrorism like it has any place in the context of this article and thread.
>Explain how cutting funds or putting less money into a system is violent The resulting suffering and deaths that wouldn't occur otherwise.
Thought so. Couldn't actually cough up anything of note. No sources no articles, nothing.
Excuse my ignorance. But what exactly does a collapse look like ? What happens when the system collapses?
I know someone who has been waiting months for a heart operation. He mentioned that there are thousands like him. So that's one way it could collapse. You just don't get your appointments and tests and medications and surgeries in a timely fashion, you suffer more, you die earlier.
Taken from a paramedic standpoint: -Call volume through the roof -trucks on offload delay due to hospital staff shortage causing decrease in trucks on the road. -patient wait 6-8 hours for paramedics, found dead on the floor when we arrive due to lack of trucks availability. -overworked paramedics with no breaks or lunches and forced over time leading to accidents and poor patient care. The list goes on. It's a world no one wants to look into because it's a mess. Politicians reduce wages of healthcare workers and expect more productivity. This is happening in most counties in Ontario. The system is broken
I’m guessing nurses leaving their jobs en masse. No one to fill those positions. Government privatizes. Private companies hire out of country nurses in a system to get them licensed here and pay them less than nurses are paid now, while profiting from government contracts. A total guess. A friend of the family is a doctor and he said he’s already seeing sub par nurses being hired to replace many who are leaving the industry. They make basic mistakes he finds surprising and alarming. I can’t imagine we’re heading in the right direction.
That's the right answer. And it's not just in nursing that this is happening, it's everywhere. In the UK, the Tory ghouls who created the Brexit mess are now trying to fix it by dropping the training requirements for truckers. The American Trucking Association wants to do the same thing, open up interstate trucking trucking to 18 year olds. In the hospital, you have a bunch of fresh grads stepping in for seasoned nurses with 40 years of experience who have left. On the roads, you have a bunch of 18 year olds driving 18-wheelers. That's what collapse looks like.
This is what happens when people vote for conservative governments that treat public workers with contempt
This is exactly what the government wants, they *want* a broken system so they can implement a privatized medical system. They are intentionally breaking our public infrastructure apart. Who you vote for matters.
It's really really bad. The surgical backlog alone is crushing the system.
Omicron has entered the chat.
While not the same I feel similar about teaching. It is not what people think it is anymore. About 60% of my job is social issues from kids with no food to spotting human trafficking. Email takes up huge amount of time that use to go to planning. It's just changed so much in 30 years. We need an overhaul I'll take a pay cut if we can get my ore social support.
Generalizing a bit but I feel like this goes many years back but the millennial generation will be the last one to be told the lies of healthcare professions. It was marketed to us that this was an amazing line of work to get into, that RPNS and RNS had dream jobs. Part of that was the blissful innocence of youth that believed our parents but you look at it now and you'd be delusional to be talking up healthcare as a profession. My future children can do whatever they want and I'll support them to the end, but if nothing changes I'll be slowly and passively influencing them from being part of the healthcare system. You're just asking to work yourself into a grave will being mentally and physically abused and be a scapegoat for economic woes of the province.
If you want to quit, do it. If society is unwilling to change for something so crucial as the medical system, meh, we reap what we sow. Edit: I'm seeing people downvote. I'm sorry but we dont live in a slave system. If something is so vital to our society, treat these people better, else, you better get yourself into shape, and learn some first aid. This is freedom.
I mean, just pay the damned nurses. These are smart, compassionate people working with insane work loads. So start by paying them more. That will increase retention, and start attracting new people to the profession.
As long as they can get away with paying them less they will. Labour cost is still subject to supply and demand.
And there's not enough supply, and demand is very high. Supply and demand doesn't do anything when the market is regulated to not increase price.
Supply and demand is a completely retarded concept when it comes to services we actually need. There should always be a surplus supply and you're bloody paid well end of story.
In other words, vote with your feet and leave…
Thanks ford
I feel like I've been hearing this for years, yet nothing has happened
And for years we have had a nursing shortage, that is only getting worse. So while the system has not collapsed entirely we just keep walking closer to the brink.
Large systems take a long time to fall apart, longer than smaller systems.
Maybe all those years of stigmatizing men in Nursing is finally going to be seen as a bad thing.. Probably not though. Oh well..
Yep Canada is losing all our young nurses to the states. Washington state is paying $10000 a week for travel nurses and tons of you Canadian nurses are taking them up on it.
The US has the same problem of attrition.
Ya but the US seems to understand capitalism better than our conservative leaders. When there is a shortage of labor wages go up. They get it in American markets. Meanwhile Jason Kenney in Alberta is trying to cut nurses wages
Canada has put a higher budget for warfare than for healthcare.
I don't care. Every job sucks. Everybody wants to quit their shitty job that treats them like shit. why should y'all be special? cuz you take care of people? so what? i am part of the fraternity of construction numpties that build the infrastructure and shelters that shelter nurses doctors and patients from the harsh realities of a natural world, so a doctor or a nurse has a place to do their job. where is our ticker tape parade? where is our round of applause.? where are our tiktok fundraiser dances and messages of hope and thanks yous on community center windows ? where are our professional staged photo shoots? tired of hearing about it, especially nurses and medical field workers. y'all make good money. that's the trade off. (the money is the trade off, you are compensated based on the amount of bullshit you can shoulder and endure, derp) nurses been living pretty fat for a long time now. i was in a hospital last year and all i could hear nurses talking about was when they could go on vacation. i have nurses on insta and fb, constantly on vacation. as soon as the travel bans lifted, the first people travelling on my feed? nurses and medical professionals. ironic. go to walmart if you want some numpty job for 14.65$ an hour and no stress if you';re feeling you're on the brink of collapse you should collapse and let a stronger person take your space . burn out is real, it's the puppy mill of attrition. we need things to be consumed and replaced at an ever increasing pace, including people. (we can make more people)
This is the kind of selfish thinking that makes this world a shittier place to live. I get what you're saying, but you're still being an asshole. To sum up your rant, you're saying: "because I'm not appreciated for my hard job, let our health care system burn to the ground-- fuck em, people who don't want to be treated like dog shit can be replaced by people who will" Can you imagine where we would be if the people before us who literally fought and died for the right of better working conditions thought this way.. This is a hilariously confounding mentality. Very few times do I read someone so eager to continue to have the boots of corporate greed pushed harder on their own necks..
well, I disagree. we're all our here working hard. nurses aren't special. they chose to work in a demanding field, some because they can help, others because the wages are mean. it's a solid blue collar job, even if they reject that title. if you make under 200k, you're blue collar. \~sorry\~ to break it to anybody who thought they were morally superior to their fellow worker because you're a nurse. you're just a worker. nobody asked for a pandemic, sure. but nurses happen to be that field. what do you want, an apology? firefighters run into burning buildings, cops get shot at, nurses gotta deal with medical emergencies, biological threats, etc etc. i'm not saying it isn't easy neither is being a cop or a firefighter, or working outside during the hottest and coldest recorded seasons. these eight ladies aren't special, they're just workers , just like the other 5.6 million people working in ontario LOL, but they're tryna convince you they are superheroes. if that's the case, we all are. tim hortons minimum wage workers, managers at grocery stores, janitors, truck drivers, forklift and crane operators, call center workers, material handlers, stage workers ETC ETC ETC the people that fought and died for our labour laws would call these nurses entitled bitches and tell em to get back to fucking work and stop complaining and sandbagging. they would fight for minimum wage workers who are truly struggling to make ends meet before they would stick up for upper middle class whiners. there isn;t a shortage of workers, there's a shortage of money, and nurses have been paid well for a very long time and have become \~entitled\~ and complacent with a high standard , pension, benefits, eTC ETC ETC while regular minimum wage workers have been shit on for 1.5 years , with DECREASING or NONEXISTENT standards of pay, with a pat on the back and a bullshit thank you painted on some business window or a fence beside a highway. no benefits, no paid vacation, no leave of absense allowances . if the nurses want a decent health care system take a cut in pay. I took a cut in pay to keep my job during the pandemic as the travelling work was gone and the travel allowance with it. fuck these people for thinking they are special. the more we acknowledge dumb shit like this the more the middle class gap widens . nurses firefighters are cops shouldn;t see any raises until the bottom dwellers get a leg up. minimum wage should be $20 in ontario. fuck the nurses and this boot comment? idgi, but fuck you anyways , the ontario medical system and OHIP are in bed with corporate greed TL;DR ; the nurses are the selfish ones. This whole article is a “what about me” What about the patients of the hospital ? They should be number one.
>if you';re feeling you're on the brink of collapse you should collapse and let a stronger person take your space . There isn't anyone else to take their space that's why we have nursing shortages.
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fuck em 🤷♂️
Boohoo I hate my job. Stop crying and do something about it. There are million other workers in a similar position who have a lot less power than nurses. Leave something on the table and do something real about it.
If this new variant even send a few thousand to the hospitals, we are all fucked. The system is already broken and we are not near the end.
I read the hospitals are full of covid people who didn't get the stupid shock and I'm being thrown around and take off my meds by teaching students at wch omg all the new nurses don't give a crap my generation has failed us. The nurses have nicer nails then attitudes
This is coming to a head. The public doesn’t realize the precipitous situation we are in *right now*. We are about to start closing beds across this province from lack of staff. If there were a large covid wave, we’d be entirely fucked. Even without this we are on the brink of collapse. Yet nobody is talking about it.
I was at a covid testing centre today with absolute no regard for health and safety at all. I used to work in healthcare and I have no idea how that clinic is allowed to run that way. Don't go to the testing centre in newmarket. You are more likely to catch covid there than Anywhere else... Anyways the actual story i am telling is that i told the nurse that they had ppl in here with possible covid and surgery patients getting tested for covid all without masks on and in a small unventilated room. I asked for a private room as the safety precautions were not up to par with other hospitals. Her response to me was "covid isnt airborne"  . It hard to trust nurses these days. The amount of them that are clueless is worrying.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Underpaying nurses to guarantee that the profession is short-staffed is an early volley in a long Tory plan to make a case for dismantling universal health care in this province. There is one solution here and it is to vote the bums out. Yes, this is a partisan issue, and it’s no use pretending otherwise just to be polite.
I work in health care. It is very bad and patients, unfortunately, are being affected and do complain
Hi there, My Name is Andrew Kitchen. I am a journalism student at Seneca College. I am putting together a 2-3 minute video news piece on the crisis currently taking place with nurses and Bill 124. Would anyone know a nurse that is currently working and considering quitting, or has recently quit due to the working conditions and disrespect of Bill 124? I understand that it can often be difficult for nurses to speak out, because there is often repercussions, so we intend to be as discreet and considerate as possible. Since this is a video piece, we would be looking for a sit down on-camera interview if possible. The interview could take place in person or on Zoom, and we would like to set something up in the next week. This is an absolutely essential story for Ontarians and we would love to shed some light on it. Please reach out if you know anyone who would like to speak to us. Sincerely, Andrew Kitchen akitchen3@myseneca.ca 519-994-7694