CANADA: Tough times for health workers, study shows

Editorial Comment AMHERST, Nova Scotia (The Amherst Daily News), March 12, 2008: These are tough times to be in the health-care profession and a survey of long-term care workers seems to indicate that nursing home workers are often risking their personal health and safety every time they go to work. The academic study, that surveyed long-term care workers in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba, found that they are seven times more likely to be punched, kicked, spat on and shoved by elderly residents than their peers in Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway. The study’s lead author, Albert Banerjee, said the appalling level of violence in Canadian institutions is a direct result of understaffing in nursing homes. Canada is an aging country and as Canadians get older they place a tremendous strain on the health-care system. Hospitals nationwide, including the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre, are literally bursting at the seams with seniors waiting for placement in long-term care facilities. However, as more facilities are built unless more long-term care workers are hired the situation is only going to get worse and seniors risk being treated more like cordwood or cattle than as people who’ve made a contribution to society deserving to live out the remainder of their lives with dignity. The study pointed out some significant shortfalls with Canada’s long-term care system. Caregivers are run off their feet with an average of only four minutes to bathe and dress each residents. In many cases, residents who call for help aren’t responded to because there aren’t enough staff working. As a result, those long-term care residents - some of whom have diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s - lash out in frustrations. If anything, this study should provide a wake-up call to provincial governments to put more human resources into long-term care facilities. It’s one thing to build more centres, as the Nova Scotia government is in the process of doing with the help of private business. It’s quite another to making sure those facilities are adequately staffed. Copyright © Amherst Daily News