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More healthcare workers signed up for OT in 2021 than in a decade: report

According to a new report detailing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian healthcare workers last year, healthcare workers worked more overtime hours last year than they did last year. a decade.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Information (CIHI) released a report on Thursday outlining some of the structural changes that have occurred in the health care system during the pandemic — and where that system began. The head is most stressful.

In 2021, more than 236,000 workers worked an average of about 8 hours per week of paid overtime and 5.8 hours per week of unpaid overtime.

Overall, this means one in five healthcare workers is constantly working overtime, but in some occupations the percentage is even higher.

About 45% of healthcare workers, 34% of family doctors and 31% of respiratory therapists regularly work overtime.

And the number of workers working overtime has only increased as time goes on, according to the report. In March 2019, about 209,900 workers had to work overtime, compared with 266,900 in April 2022.

“The pandemic has increased structural stress on our health system and people across the country are struggling,” said Deborah Cohen, Director of Drug and Health Force Information Services at CIHI. efforts to address the challenges of the health workforce.

“It is important to continue to strengthen Canada’s healthcare workforce data base to help find evidence-based solutions that work towards improvements in employee health and fitness as well as employee wellbeing. as overall patient health outcomes.”

Combined, workers have logged more than 18 million overtime hours in Canadian hospitals in 2020-2021, a 15% increase from the previous year.

Nurses, who have the fourth-highest share of overtime at 27%, are part of the staff that account for more than half of the hospital’s actual overtime hours in 2020-2021. More than 9,770,000 overtime hours are devoted to inpatient nursing services.

This report comes amid a sharp increase in the number of children visiting children’s hospitals with respiratory diseases, with some hospitals saying they are operating at 100% capacity.

Dr Douglas Sinclair, Vice President of IWK Medical Center, said: “Access to primary care is so desperate that patients have to go to the emergency department, which puts even more pressure on them. for an already thin staff.” said in the release.

“Emergency medicine is a team sport; Frontline nurses, emergency physicians, and clerical staff are all facing ethical dilemmas when trying to manage the huge wait times that patients face during emergencies.”

The early years of the pandemic also saw the delay or halt of many non-essential surgeries, meaning fewer healthcare services will be provided between 2020 and 2021.

However, while more services began to be offered as time went on and service volumes began to reach pre-pandemic levels in early 2021, wait times have not recovered, according to the report. CIHI.

When comparing this time period with the same period in 2019, the number of surgeries performed in 2021 is less but the waiting time is higher than in 2019.

The drop in services also means that doctors’ earnings have fallen like never before for the first time in 20 years.

The report also looks at where occupations are losing or gaining workers.

GP growth is slowing — from 2012 to 2014, the profession grew by an average of 3.4%, but from 2019 to 2021, it only grew by 1.3%.

This is consistent with a number of recent studies showing that GPs are in decline. One study found that the number of family doctors in Ontario who stopped working doubled in the first six months of the pandemic compared with previous years, while a recent study published in the journal Family Physicians. This month’s Canadian family shows nearly one in five family doctors in Ontario. had plans to close down their practice in the next five years.

According to CIHI, nurse practitioners continued to grow steadily throughout the pandemic with an average growth rate of 9.6% from 2019 to 2021.

However, many people are still leaving the workforce in 2021.

The number of registered nurses and licensed practical nurses working in direct care in community health or long-term care agencies decreased by 612 between 2020 and 2021. .

In the long-term care sector alone, the overall nursing workforce fell by 2.2%.

During the same period, the number of private care nurses increased — an additional 1,251 registered nurses and 667 practice nurses were licensed to provide direct patient care at nursing facilities and private medical centers, as well as those working independently.

The CIHI report notes that federal and provincial governments have implemented a number of funding initiatives or interventions during the pandemic to try to recruit and retain healthcare workers, giving examples about a federal program that provides free training to 4,000 new personal support employees and increases funding and training for employees.

The report suggests finding flexible solutions to how health care works in Canada could be key to facilitating a full recovery from the pandemic’s impact on the care system. our health, adding that more can be done to promote healthcare workers who have had international training but may not have been licensed to practice here.

“Health care is a complex issue. Dr Leigh Chapman, Canada’s Chief Nursing Officer, said in the press release that there is no quick fix, but provinces and territories are working to review the entire medical workforce. “Solutions include things like much faster integration of internationally trained nurses, looking at nurses who have left the profession to re-employ them, and retaining nurses by improving working conditions.” job.”



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