Brian Cross, Windsor Star
In what it is calling a “course correction,” Hotel-Dieu Grace
Healthcare is reducing the ratio of registered nurses to patients on
some of its units from one-to-three to one-to-five or one-to-six.
Hospital and union leadership say the quality of care to its patients in its complex continuing care units should not suffer.
And while the change will cause upheaval, the nursing job losses will be small and done through attrition, they say.
“It will look different, but it will not be poor quality care,” CEO Janice Kaffer said Friday. Staff got news of the changes on Thursday.
Acknowledging that some of her members are upset, Jo-dee Brown, president of the hospital’s Ontario Nurses’ Association unit, said the complex continuing care units in Hotel-Dieu Grace’s Emara Centre For Healthy Aging and Mobility are “generously staffed” — a situation inherited from when Windsor Regional Hospital ran the campus.
“Maybe if you’ve been coming to work for 20 years and been that extra pair of hands, and now all of a sudden you’re not going to be that extra pair of hands, maybe that isn’t palatable. I get that,” said Brown, who has about 171 active members.
“I guess it’s time for reflection for the individual. Do they want to pull up their socks and earn their money in a different way, or do they want to leave?”
Kaffer, who is a nurse, said that current one-to-three ratio is better coverage than at many acute care hospitals.
A realignment in 2013 saw the city’s two hospitals trade locations and change their roles. Windsor Regional became the acute care hospital at two campuses. Hotel-Dieu Grace became the non-acute hospital at the Tayfour campus on Prince Road, typically taking care of patients for weeks and months as they recover from major illnesses or go through end-of-life stages in palliative care.
When there are few patients on a unit, the nurse-to-patient ratio can be as low as one-to-one or one-to-two, Kaffer said.
There are also registered nurses who aren’t assigned patients. Instead, these more highly skilled RNs spend their shifts assisting registered practical nurses with tasks RPNs could be doing. As part of this staffing change, RPNs are getting extra training so they can work “their full scope of practice,” Kaffer said.
She said there will be reductions in the numbers of both RPNs and RNs. The numbers haven’t been revealed yet to staff but she said it will be much less than a 10 per cent cut, and should be handled by early retirement packages.
“It does change the workload, appropriately so,” said Kaffer, adding that the change will be made gradually over the next six to 12 months, to ensure there’s no decline in quality of care. “It’s what I’m calling a course correction.”
Brown said the union will learn more details about the staff changes at a meeting with management on Wednesday. But she’s been assured no one will be going out the door involuntarily.
“I’m not happy with it either, but fiscal responsibility and reality is something we have to live with and I believe that the employer has handled this in the most fiscally responsible way they can right now,” she said.
bcross@postmedia.com
Hospital and union leadership say the quality of care to its patients in its complex continuing care units should not suffer.
And while the change will cause upheaval, the nursing job losses will be small and done through attrition, they say.
“It will look different, but it will not be poor quality care,” CEO Janice Kaffer said Friday. Staff got news of the changes on Thursday.
Acknowledging that some of her members are upset, Jo-dee Brown, president of the hospital’s Ontario Nurses’ Association unit, said the complex continuing care units in Hotel-Dieu Grace’s Emara Centre For Healthy Aging and Mobility are “generously staffed” — a situation inherited from when Windsor Regional Hospital ran the campus.
“Maybe if you’ve been coming to work for 20 years and been that extra pair of hands, and now all of a sudden you’re not going to be that extra pair of hands, maybe that isn’t palatable. I get that,” said Brown, who has about 171 active members.
“I guess it’s time for reflection for the individual. Do they want to pull up their socks and earn their money in a different way, or do they want to leave?”
Kaffer, who is a nurse, said that current one-to-three ratio is better coverage than at many acute care hospitals.
A realignment in 2013 saw the city’s two hospitals trade locations and change their roles. Windsor Regional became the acute care hospital at two campuses. Hotel-Dieu Grace became the non-acute hospital at the Tayfour campus on Prince Road, typically taking care of patients for weeks and months as they recover from major illnesses or go through end-of-life stages in palliative care.
When there are few patients on a unit, the nurse-to-patient ratio can be as low as one-to-one or one-to-two, Kaffer said.
There are also registered nurses who aren’t assigned patients. Instead, these more highly skilled RNs spend their shifts assisting registered practical nurses with tasks RPNs could be doing. As part of this staffing change, RPNs are getting extra training so they can work “their full scope of practice,” Kaffer said.
She said there will be reductions in the numbers of both RPNs and RNs. The numbers haven’t been revealed yet to staff but she said it will be much less than a 10 per cent cut, and should be handled by early retirement packages.
“It does change the workload, appropriately so,” said Kaffer, adding that the change will be made gradually over the next six to 12 months, to ensure there’s no decline in quality of care. “It’s what I’m calling a course correction.”
Brown said the union will learn more details about the staff changes at a meeting with management on Wednesday. But she’s been assured no one will be going out the door involuntarily.
“I’m not happy with it either, but fiscal responsibility and reality is something we have to live with and I believe that the employer has handled this in the most fiscally responsible way they can right now,” she said.
bcross@postmedia.com
