To the Editor:
It comes as no surprise to nurses that Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is warning people not to come to the emergency department (ED) because of patient overcrowding.
As the Provincial President of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), our 60,000 plus members who work tirelessly at this and almost every hospital in Ontario experience dangerous levels of nurse understaffing daily, causing major delays in access to patient care.
Significant ED delays and outright closures should never happen in a province like Ontario, but they are a very sad reality. In 2024, Ontario EDs closed for a combined total of nearly 15,000 hours, most of it caused by the nursing shortage and nurse understaffing.
The solution is to achieve safe levels of nurse staffing by implementing RN staffing ratios. Experience in places like BC and California, where nurse staffing ratios are the law, have been shown to improve nurse retention and recruitment rates and decrease patient complication rates and deaths.
ED closures are a direct result of years of deliberate Ford Conservative government policies that starve our publicly funded hospitals and take an enormous toll on nurses and health-care professionals. Nurses have the solution and are working to have nurse-to-patient ratios in place in our hospitals.
With the election of a new provincial government this month, Ontarians say that fixing our public health-care system is a priority.
Implementing nurse-to-patient ratios is a good starting point.
Erin Ariss, RN
Provincial President
Ontario Nurses’ Association
