RNAO Updates

Today our focus is on Cuba, a Caribbean island with about 11 million population and a very different economic and political regime. Canadians know Cuba well through their tourist visits – more than one million in 2019 – enjoying the beaches, food, music and friendly welcoming from the Cuban people. Today, we are interested in a different facet of Cuban society – the community focus of its health system and their success, so far, in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. There are important insights for us in Ontario.

There is little doubt that school reopening in September is one of the most crucial policy decisions in terms of the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario and everywhere else. Ontario has about two million school age children and 160,000 teachers – those are huge numbers. That means wrong decisions will have fateful implications both for the health and wellbeing of children and their parents, teachers and staff, as well as for the pandemic curve.

RNAO says the long-term care (LTC) staffing study released by the government today highlights deficiencies known for decades, and underlines an LTC sector that has been neglected by government after government, resulting in severe underfunding and understaffing.

Let me begin by repeating what I have begged government at all levels since January, and in particular from Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health David Williams: We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best. During the first wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, we had it backwards – we hoped for the best, but engaged action late and at a slow pace, thus ending in the middle of the pack.

RNAO urges the Ontario government to immediately direct all nursing homes in Ontario to reunite residents with their loved ones, including those in nursing homes experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak. RNAO’s call is driven by the need to address a basic human right, and also to provide the foundational person- and family-centred care that is critical to quality of life for LTC residents and their families.

Nurses face significant mental health issues from high rates of work-related stress, anxiety, depression, burnout and PTSD. A recent report from investigators at the University of Regina in collaboration with the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions found that 81.7% of nurses surveyed reported experiencing critical incident stress at least once during their career.

This month marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, and is being celebrated by the World Health Organization as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. A pioneering nurse, statistician and social reformer, Nightingale has served as an exemplar for the impact that nurses make across the globe. It seems apt, then, that the spread of a global pandemic should coincide with efforts to recognize the valuable contributions of nursing to health worldwide.

RNAO has been for several weeks calling on public health authorities in Ontario and in Canada to immediately implement mandatory masking in certain settings. Specifically, we follow the Masks4Canada letter from healthcare professionals asking that mandatory masking (or face covering) policies be established for “ACT”

COVID-19 has challenged nurses everywhere in ways we never anticipated or imagined. They’re nursing people with knowledge, compassion and courage while risking their lives. It is fitting that 2020 is the Year of the Nurse because people have always respected and trusted nurses and yet, this pandemic has highlighted the work of nurses and the central role we play in improving health, in building healthier communities, and in caring for the ill and suffering.

RNAO continues pushing with determination to make things better in long-term care in Ontario. We have all been in shock at the tragedy that has befallen so many of our elders due to systemic neglect and faulty policies that have been going for too long. RNAO issued last week a new report summarizing two decades of reports, inquiry and commission – and calling on the government to take action, not engage in more study and deliberation.