Fellow Ontarians,

As Ontario Emergency Department physicians we need to inform you that, across the province, Emergency Departments are in crisis. This time, it is not an issue of a lack of beds or ventilators. It is because we are losing our acute care nursing colleagues in droves. Several have died, hundreds have become ill with COVID and now nurses are leaving their profession in unprecedented numbers due to burnout, PTSD and the utter disrespect they face from the Ontario government.

Every single one of us will be cared for by a nurse at some time in our lives. They will carefully administer us essential medications, change our dressings, bathe us and be at our side day and night to accompany us through our illnesses.

During the pandemic nurses have been the ones who have held the hands of people about to be intubated, accompanied patients as they suffered with no relatives allowed and body-bagged the dead quickly because beds were needed.

Emergency Doctors know that without our skilled and dedicated nursing colleagues patient care will grind to a halt. We are seeing entire sections within our Emergency Departments regularly closed because of a lack of nursing staff. This leads to overcrowding which is particularly concerning with the highly infectious delta variant.

Nurses want to do their job. But with the ongoing exodus of their colleagues those who remain are saddled with even heavier workloads. They are demoralized that they cannot provide the quality of care that they pride themselves on and that their patients deserve.

In 2019 the Ford government passed Bill 124 which amounts to wage suppression legislation keeping nursing wage increases well below inflation. Nurses have not received an increase in their salaries on par with inflation for over a decade. This is unacceptable in the context of the sacrifices they have made to care for patients during this pandemic.

Nurses’ collective bargaining is limited by the fact that they cannot strike because they are essential workers. They can, however, leave the profession and many are voting with their feet, quitting in unprecedented numbers.

In the early days of the pandemic, every evening at 7pm, Ontarians turned out in unprecedented numbers on their doorsteps to bang pots and pans as a show of support for frontline healthcare workers. If we truly value our nurses, if we want to keep our Emergency Departments running, if we want to stem the tide of nurses leaving their profession we must demand that our provincial government treat them with respect and pay them the dignified wage they deserve.

The government must repeal Bill 124. Your healthcare depends on it.

Sincerely your local ER doctor,