As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year, initiatives like Bell Let’s Talk Day, now in its 12th year, aims to help people of all backgrounds and age groups struggling with mental health by raising both awareness and money to support organizations across Canada that help improve mental health care access and funding research that could one day offer promising treatments, all with the goal of eliminating the stigma around mental illness.
The Ontario government is providing a new pathway for nursing education with the launch of Canadore College’s new stand-alone four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in Northern Ontario. “This is an important milestone for postsecondary education in Ontario. Given Canadore’s northern location, the college is in a unique position to address an acute regional need for nurses,” said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities of Ontario.
The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) has gained praise recently for its General Internal Medicine unit, which is led entirely by women. “Our chief of staff is a woman, our senior medical officer is a woman, all of this sort of fairly recently and I think that sort of highlights the change that is slowly coming about within medicine,” said Dr. Isabelle Desjardins, General Internal Medicine Site Chief for the hospital. It should be noted that this is still a relatively rare situation in medicine in Canada.
As the Omicron-driven surge in COVID-19 infections is worsening the shortage of nurses at Canadian hospitals, thousands of internationally trained nurses say they can ease the strain on the health-care system if they are given the chance to work. "We can help... We just hope that they could consider us," they said.
Ontario Long Term Care Association's CEO, Donna Duncan, said that an estimated 20 to 30 per cent of staff are off work right now due to the pandemic. “We are seeing more waves of staff leaving and staff coming back, so it’s not a big hit all at once, it is more of a rolling impact we are finding more manageable at this time.” Duncan also noted that changes like vaccines have made things more manageable for staff.
Advocates for the nursing sector are sounding the alarm of an impending “public health crisis” as surging rates of Omicron across the country stretch already limited staff to breaking point. The warning comes as Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced several new COVID-19 public health measures to contain the spread of the variant.
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