The
Ontario Council of Hospital Unions is urging the ministry of labour to
do more to protect health-care workers who face daily threats of
violence on the job.
Ontario’s
nurses and personal support workers are facing an “epidemic of
violence” caused by government and hospitals’ failure to safeguard them
from abuse, assault and sexual harassment, according to the body
representing health-care providers.
In a
letter sent Monday to Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn, Ontario Council of
Hospital Unions president Michael Hurley expressed dismay at the
“daily” threats health-care workers confront on the job, which he calls
“unacknowledged, dismissed, or tolerated by administrators and
regulators.”
“In no other occupation or walk of life would such abuse be tolerated,” Hurley said.
Health-care
workers have the second highest number of reported injuries in the
province — behind the service sector, but ahead of such industries as
construction, mining and manufacturing, according to the latest
available statistics from the workers’ compensation board. In 2014, a
study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information found at least
half of all registered practical nurses were assaulted by patients, the
letter obtained by the Star says.
New
research commissioned by OCHU, which will be published this year, also
has documented “widespread and systemically accepted violence” among
health-care staff in seven Ontario communities, according to the letter.
All but one of the 54 workers interviewed
in that study said they directly experienced violence at work,
according to Jim Brophy, who conducted the research with fellow
occupational health expert Margaret Keith.
“It’s
become so normalized, so accepted, that now it’s really viewed as part
of the job. You might as well put it in as part of the job description,”
Brophy told the Star.
“I was scandalized
by how much it was replicating all the features of domestic violence.
Blaming the victims, keeping the dirty little secret quiet, really
internalizing all of this.”
Dianne
Paulin, a registered practical nurse from North Bay with 25 years of
job experience, says she would have been spared her life-changing
injures if the psychiatric ward she worked on had implemented common
sense policies like bolting down furniture.
Instead,
she was assaulted by a patient who pinned her against his room door
with a chair and repeatedly punched her, leaving her with a bulging neck
disc, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks.
“You
don’t go to work and think you’re going to die. I went to work because I
loved my job and the clients liked me,” she said. “It wasn’t that I
didn’t know what I was doing. It was the environment.”
Workers
identified underfunding and understaffing as “significant contributors”
to workplace violence, often perpetrated by patients or their family
members against employees who are sometimes forced to work alone because
of shortages. Brophy said the abuse often took on a sexual and racial
hue because many health-care workers are women of colour. But fear of
reprisal from hospital managers discouraged nurses and other staff from
raising the issue, he said.
“Nobody is
allowed to talk about it. Health-care workers are frightened. We had to
conduct these interviews pretty close to secretly.”
In
2010, the Ontario government introduced legislation requiring employers
to have programs in place to deal with workplace violence and
harassment. Those reforms were prompted by the 2005 slaying of Windsor
nurse Lori Dupont, who was stabbed multiple times in the chest at work
by a physician she had ended a relationship with.
In
a statement to the Star, the minister of labour’s spokesperson, Michael
Speers, said the government is “committed to addressing workplace
violence in the health-care sector and is developing a plan to make
hospitals safer. A progress report on that initiative is expected to be
released in the coming weeks.
“No one
should feel unsafe at work, and concrete steps are needed to ensure the
safety of our health-sector workers,” Speers said.
Last year, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health was slapped with an $80,000 fine
under workplace safety laws in relation to a 2014 beating of a nurse by
a patient who reportedly left the victim “beyond recognition.”
Brophy
said his research found workers often had little awareness about what
policies were in place to protect them at their hospitals.
“The
problem is widespread, it’s pervasive, it’s unreported. But when you go
to the workplace, you find it’s not being taken seriously by the
employers.”
The letter makes several
recommendations to government, including that the ministry of labour
launches a program of “comprehensive inspections and audits of all of
Ontario’s health-care facilities” to ensure effective protections are in
place, and that every workplace has safeguards like personal monitors,
alarms, and identification of violent patients. It also calls for
co-operation with the ministry of health to ensure adequate staffing
levels, and the presence of trained security personnel where needed.
Government
should “immediately enact” whistleblower protection for workers who
speak out about workplace violence, the letter adds.
Paulin,
60, has been unable to work since she was attacked in 2011. Although
she received workers’ compensation for her injuries, she says her
benefits were cut in half in 2015 after the board told her — against the
advice of her psychiatrist, she says — that she was able to return to
work. She is now appealing the decision.
The
WSIB cannot comment on individual cases, but a board spokesperson,
Christine Arnott, said the board’s aim is to “help injured workers
recover safely and return to work and their lives.”
“Ultimately,
we want people to recover successfully and receive the assistance they
need from the WSIB. If someone is concerned about a decision or other
aspects of their claim, we encourage them to speak with us. We are here
to help,” she said.
“Right now I’m going
to the banks because I owe too much money, because I’ve been struggling
and struggling since they knocked me in half,” said Paulin. “I’m at the
point where I have to sell the house.”
She says she has already lost something even more valuable.
“I’m not me.” she said. “I’ve never been me since this happened.
