A critical resource for pandemic times: Learn about the Nurses’ Health Program

COVID-19 has made it a more challenging time for people with addiction and mental health disorders. It’s also been an enormously stressful, exhausting and sometimes traumatizing experience, particularly for nurses at the frontlines dealing with COVID or working anywhere under the extraordinary circumstances created by the pandemic. For that reason, I am taking the opportunity to remind our nursing readers – NPs, RNs and RPNs – of the Nurses’ Health Program that can be a crucially important resource for those who may need it.

RNAO gravely concerned about the second pandemic wave

RNAO and others remains gravely concerned by the late and insufficient efforts to control the second pandemic wave, which is once again overwhelming long term care (LTC) institutions, in particular nursing homes across the province, adding anguish to residents, staff and the families of both. This “too little, too late approach” continues to disadvantage populations compromised by their social conditions.

Continuing the conversation: Mobilizing collective action for long-term care reform in Canada

RNAO organized a path breaking Cross Country Meeting to engage Collective Action for Long-Term Care Reform in Canada on Monday, November 9. The overwhelming response and active engagement is indicative of the urgency and opportunity for collective action. To this end, we are hosting another Cross-Country Meeting. We will continue the conversation on Monday, December 14.

RNAO, once again, plays major role in the media during November

Today, we bring you a summary of RNAO’s media engagement for the month of November. Our extensive media exposure focused on key issues addressing the urgency of the pandemic situation. This includes the problematic provincial leadership in recent weeks; the auditor general’s report on the province’s handling of the pandemic; the ongoing crisis in long-term care; burnout among nurses and other healthcare workers; as well as the need for a #COVIDzero strategy. 

COVID-19 in long-term care: A nurse’s witness statement

Nurses and other healthcare workers in the frontlines of Ontario’s COVID-19 pandemic – especially in long term care, but increasingly in other sectors – are experiencing trauma. This is the result of sheer exhaustion, insufficient and late government action leading to escalating spread of COVID-19, episodes of public disregard for the necessary rules to contain the virus, and the excruciating loss of lives. And there is more – the muzzling of healthcare workers’ voices.

RNAO says government’s measures too late and insufficient to break the transmission – but we must enact them fully within a COVID-Zero strategy

RNAO issued today a press release in response to the lockdown measures in Toronto and Peel regions announced by the government. RNAO continues to call for an aggressive and all-encompassing lockdown, followed by an effective and concerted strategy to snuff out the virus – a “COVID-Zero” strategy. The longer we wait, the more painful these pandemic cycles will be.

RNAO continues to advocate for national long-term care standards in Canada

As our readers are aware, RNAO has been at the forefront of the demand to establish national standards in LTC, given the failure of provincial governments to act – for two decades – and the tragedy brought by the pandemic as a result. This week, RNAO wrote again to the prime minister and to Premier Doug Ford in anticipation of their meeting reiterating the urgency to establish standards. See the October 14 letter below.

RNAO relieved that Premier Ford engages late, but essential, action to lessen spread of COVID-19

RNAO has been a central voice in Ontario alerting for the need to engage action against a galloping second wave of COVID-19. You can see some of our multiple interventions in social and mainstream media -- asking for government intervention from early September -- when we warned that, baring closures of inside non-essential places, we would see disastrous results. Today, the Ontario government took action. Here is RNAO’s press release today.

RNAO joins global movement: A Just Recovery for All

RNAO has been particularly active in recent months addressing structural inequities that led to vulnerable populations suffering the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. RNAO is adding its voice to a campaign launched in June supported by hundreds of progressive organizations in Canada calling for a just and sustainable recovery from COVID-19.