If we continue to overlook the working conditions of nurses, we risk not only their welfare but also the quality of care our system provides. That is why Canada’s nurses are proposing three bold actions that would create the conditions for patient safety in all sectors of care.
Establishing mandated nurse-patient ratios across all health care settings is critical for ensuring patient safety and high-quality care. Research shows that appropriate staffing ratios improve patient outcomes, reduce errors and lower mortality rates. Other places, including California and parts of Australia, have successfully implemented safe nurse-patient ratios.In Canada, nurses also often face mandatory overtime and extended shifts, which lead to fatigue and increased risk of errors, adversely affecting both nurses’ well-being and patient care. The federal government should establish clear limits on consecutive work hours for nurses, mirroring the safety protocols in industries such as aviation and rail, where fatigue management is strictly controlled.
Investing in the education and financial support of future nurses is essential to rebuilding the nursing workforce. Canada needs more scholarships, bursaries, and paid preceptorship and mentorship programs for nursing students, reducing financial barriers and encouraging more people to pursue and complete nursing education.With burnout rates at an all-time high, offering comprehensive mental health support is vital for retaining nurses in the profession. This could include initiatives like dedicated mental health days, access to psych support programs and online therapy options, ensuring nurses have the resources they need to maintain their mental health and well-being.
A universal pharmacare program would not onlysave lives by ensuring access to necessary medications but also reduce overallhealth care costs by preventing complications and hospitalizations.
Underfunding public health care results in staffing shortages. When there are not enough nurses and other health care workers, workloads become overwhelming, and the quality of patient care deteriorates. This situation has escalated into a crisis marked by long wait times, emergency room closures and patients being overlooked. Governments need to properly fund our public health care system and implement minimum nurse-to-patient ratios to safeguard patient care quality.
Nurses care about their work, but governments have relied on their resilience for too long to support our health care system. Every day, high workloads drive nurses to make decisions that are detrimental to not only the quality of care they can deliver but also their own personal health. Governments need to set regulations on safe working hours to preserve quality of care and safeguard nurses’ health.
Workplace violence impacts nurses and the overall health care system. More than nine in ten nurses have experienced some form of abuse, ranging from verbal to physical attacks, in the past year. Governments need to better protect nurses against workplace violence, ensuring a safer and more supportive environment for nurses and enhancing the quality of patient care.
Canadians value public health care. But governments across the country are pushing ahead with for-profit, private care. If we want to protect access to care for everyone, we need to continue investing in and reinforcing our public health care systems, focusing on supporting and retaining health care professionals rather than diverting them to corporations, who are only it for profit.
Nursing students across the country are excited to start their careers, but they're also anxious about walking into a difficult situation.
Sustaining Nursing in Canada proposes a set of concrete actionable solutions to help meaningfully solve the health care staffing crisis.
This report details how governments’ poor planning and failure to address the systemic challenges facing nurses created today’s crisis and the impact on nurses, patients and the health system.
Nurses are at the heart of the solutions recommended in this report:
