The Association of Registered Practical Nurses (WeRPN) of Ontario released survey results Tuesday, revealing the plight of nursing in the province.
“I think these findings will shock the public – nearly seven in 10 nurses see patient health being put at risk because there simply aren’t enough time, resources and staffing levels,” said Dianne Martin, chief executive of WeRPN.  statement.  “That’s worrying, now it’s normalising.”
WeRPN represents over 55,000 RPNs across the country and 763 of them participated in the online survey from May 1-9, 2022.
The survey was a follow-up study to a December 2020 survey asking RPNs about the state of nursing amid the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the latest survey, 93 percent of nurses said their workload has increased in the past two to three years, and 68 percent said they don’t have the time or resources to provide adequate care to their patients.
Meanwhile, 66 percent of nurses said they had to see more patients per nurse because of the ongoing nursing shortage, while 87 percent reported taking on more responsibilities in their role.
“As an RPN, I do more than one role, helping with PSW work, in the dining room, at the front desk, in addition to my RPN duties: I treat 45 patients on my shift.  It’s too much — they all have a lot of geriatric drugs, puffs, narcotics, insulin.  In addition, treatments, calls and emergency handling.  That’s a lot for just one nurse,” one anonymous nurse wrote in the survey.
Four out of five nurses have experienced moral distress in their profession, up more than 10 percent since December 2020.
Eighty-eight per cent of RPNs said they have been affected by staff shortages, with many facing “additional stress and increased isolation”.
In particular, seven in 10 said they had to work longer hours to cover staff shortages, including 39% who worked unpaid overtime at the end of their shifts.
In addition, six in 10 nurses said their mental health had worsened due to stress about staff shortages.
“I feel like we have to constantly rush residents and cut corners to get everything done and decide between taking breaks and completing tasks for each shift,” wrote one anonymous nurse.
The survey also revealed the province has the potential to lose half its RPN workforce if it does not address the burnout nurses face.
47 percent of RPNs surveyed said they are considering leaving nursing, up from 34 percent in December 2020.
Additionally, six out of ten of these nurses said they would leave the healthcare field altogether.
Top reasons for leaving the field include insufficient wages, excessive workloads, and compensation practices that nurses feel are unfair.
As nurses face overwhelming working conditions, morale has dropped significantly since December 2020.
Only 36 percent of nurses said they feel proud to be a nurse, a huge drop from 67 percent at the end of 2020.
Additionally, 83 percent of respondents said they feel morale at work has deteriorated over the past two years.
When asked what could improve their job satisfaction, 94 percent of nurses said improved wages, 78 percent said increased staffing levels, and 64 percent said standardized workloads.
Higher wages appear to be the most important goal for the majority of respondents, with 91 percent saying they feel they are not fairly compensated for their role, up from 86 percent in December 2020.
Meanwhile, 75 percent of nurses said they face financial stress, up from 57 percent in December 2020.
To tackle the worsening plight of nurses, WeRPN Chief Executive Dianne Martin outlined three calls for action that the government must implement immediately.
One action is to repeal House Bill 124, which currently caps nurses’ salaries at one percent of total compensation for three years.  Martin recommends that wages increase at least 20 percent to bring them in line with other groups of nurses and reflect the cost of living increase.
“While the overall nursing shortage cannot be alleviated immediately in the short term, such an increase will go a long way in retaining nurses who are considering leaving.  It will also provide nurses with significant recognition to boost morale, which has been hit very hard over the past two years,” Martin wrote in the report.
Martin is also calling on the Government to tackle unsafe workloads by hiring more full-time RPNs and to ensure RPN voices are included in policy-making.
The troubling results come as ERs and ICUs across the province are severely understaffed amid a seventh wave of the pandemic, with Toronto General Hospital on standby for the past two weeks.
At a news conference Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford offered no new solutions to the staffing crisis, but repeated calls for the federal government to provide more financial support.
METHODOLOGY: For comparison purposes only, the sample design will have a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, 19 times out of 20.