'Major overhaul' needed to stop abuse of front-line workers, researcher says
Nurse Sonja Bernhard says you don't have to look to hard to find cases of abuse in her line of work
Nurse Sonja Bernhard says she reconsidering her future as a nurse, as she deals with burnout and frequent cases of abuse at work. Just a month ago, she came home from work with bruises and scratch marks after trying to get a confused patient out of a secure elevator.
"We attempted to extract this patient from the elevator, the patient began to strike out, claw, grab, hit, pull hair," Bernhard told The Current's Matt Galloway.
Bernhard is a registered practical nurse at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, in Hamilton, Ont.. She said situations like that, known as code whites, are all too common.
A code white is the hospital call signal for aggressive behaviour or a violent person on the premises. When asked to name examples, Bernhard has no shortage.
During her time as a nurse, she has also been thrown to the ground, which resulted in whiplash that had her out for a week. Another time a coworker was slapped, and once Bernhard was nearly stabbed with her own injection needle. She's also heard verbal abuse, when a coworker was just trying to get blood work from a patient.
Bernhard said it's challenging with some patients, like those who suffer from Alzheimer's, because she feels pressing charges doesn't accomplish anything.
"Instead of charging, a lot of times they just let it go because they think … it's a lot more trouble than it's actually worth," she said.
But when incidents do happen, the solution is often to move the nurse to a different unit, which Bernhard says is not a good outcome.
"A lot of the nurses don't want to be moved to a unit that they're not familiar with, to work with a team that they don't know," said Bernhard.
In an emailed statement from the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development, the department said it has zero tolerance for workplace violence.
"Our ministry has conducted multiple education and inspection initiatives that have focused on helping hospitals, long-term care homes, retirement homes and community care workplaces, prevent workplace violence against workers," the statement said.
"Our Ministry responds to every complaint we receive. Any worker in Ontario who feels unsafe should report their concerns to our Ministry so we can investigate."
Fixing it
James Brophy says Bernhard's story is like many he has heard. Brophy co-wrote the book Code White: Sounding the Alarm on Violence Against Health Care Workers with Margaret Keith.
"We need a major overhaul of our whole health care system," said Brophy, an occupational health researcher and former executive director of the Windsor and Sarnia chapters of the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers
He said the public doesn't understand what is really happening in healthcare facilities, and that Canada has one of the lowest ratios of nurses to patients in the industrialized world.
Brophy said over the past few decades, violence against healthcare workers has been on the rise for a few reasons.
"Certainly the gross understaffing, underfunding of the institutions, the inability to respect and listen to the front-line workers that are facing these difficulties," said Brophy.
He said most of the nurses he talked to were afraid of speaking out.
"When they do try to talk about it, they're blamed, they're silenced. And so the public just doesn't see what's happening."
Bernhard says the pandemic has highlighted some of those challenges. She's feeling overworked, and exhausted. In January she will drop down to part-time hours because she needs a break.
"I am burned out and it's hard to keep going to work and support your team and to support the patients when you are feeling like you're constantly in an uphill battle to fight for things," said Bernhard.
She said there are a number of solutions, including mandated staffing ratios, and that people should be free to speak their mind about what's happening without the fear of losing their job.
But if nothing changes, it's going to continue to get harder to do her job, she said.
"We're all kind of in survival mode where we're doing only what is required of us to get through our day and to make sure that our patients are safe."
Written by Philip Drost. Produced by Julie Crysler.
