Markham Stouffville Hospital Letter to the Editor
The following letter to the editor ran in the Markham Economist & Sun newspaper.
Published: January 30, 2008
Re: “Isn't this awful?”
I am writing to comment on the awful conditions and experience suffered by Jeanne Ker-Hornell Clarke and her husband, Charles, in the emergency department of Markham-Stouffville Hospital (Markham Economist & Sun, January 24, 2008).
There is no doubt that emergency departments at Markham-Stouffville and a number of other hospitals in Ontario suffer from overcrowding, under-staffing and a serious lack of beds and other resources.
The registered nurses at this hospital are painfully aware of the threats to quality patient care, as experienced by the Clarkes.
The Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA) has heard of this type of experience before and has thus become an advocate for improving workloads for RNs so that they can in turn provide better quality patient care.
ONA has negotiated a “professional responsibility clause” for our members – and we work with employers to improve the quality of patient care.
The clause gives nurses a voice when they see that staffing levels are too low to enable them to care for their patients to the standards required of them to maintain their nursing licenses. It is one of the many benefits enjoyed by the 53,000 registered nurses and allied health professionals who are ONA members.
Currently, ONA is working on initiatives to end “hallway nursing” – the situation the Clarkes found themselves in at Markham Stouffville. Hallway nursing has resulted in patients being crammed into linen closets, left in hallways with no call button, no privacy and their caregivers with no close access to equipment that could be needed – because of a lack of beds needed for patients needing in-hospital care.
We want Jeanne Ker-Hornall Clarke and your other readers to know that the nurses at this facility do care, and are painfully aware of the shortcomings in patient care that conditions there are causing.
While the nursing shortage and tight hospital budgets are a reality, there is a way to improve care and there is a voice for nurses' concerns. No nurse wants to see patients suffer.
-- Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN
President, Ontario Nurses' Association
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