Nurses at Hamilton Health Sciences paid double to avoid closures during staffing crisis

Hamilton's largest hospital network is paying nurses double to work outside of their regularly scheduled shifts to fill critical staff shortages.

The unprecedented short-term measure put in place by Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) is being implemented by hospitals across the province to keep services running during a staffing crisis that is affecting the entire health-care system, says the Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA).

The cold, hard fact is it's a disaster out there," said ONA president Cathryn Hoy. I don't know who could say it's not collapsing."

HHS and St. Joseph's Healthcare have a combined 675 job openings they can't fill despite aggressive recruitment efforts. In addition, there were 330 staff self-isolating due to COVID as of Thursday.

Burlington's Joseph Brant Hospital has a vacancy rate of nearly nine per cent.

It gets worse every day," Hoy said about the provincial shortage. There's nothing there to help us."

At the same time, the hospitals face significant spikes in demand, long waits to discharge patients to community care and pandemic backlogs of over 12,000 surgeries for Hamilton alone. At Joseph Brant, the surgical wait-list is 2,655 people.

Documents obtained by The Spectator show HHS has asked nurses to voluntarily be on standby outside of their regular work hours as part of a callback team running from Aug. 11 to at least Sept. 21. Team members will be called in when staffing levels are at or below critical levels.

HHS has established time-limited standby teams in select areas to address a shortage of registered nurses and registered respiratory therapists across our organization," the hospital network said in a statement to The Spec Thursday.

The documents state that nurses on the voluntary team will be called in on their day off and have no choice but to accept the extra shift.

In exchange, they are paid double their regular hourly rate with a minimum guarantee of four hours.

That's pretty standard right now - unheard of previously," said Hoy. It's a little Band-Aid solution."

She doesn't see it as sustainable because it burns out a workforce already exhausted from nearly two-and-a-half years of the pandemic.

You get called in repeatedly, you tire out, you burn out," said Hoy. How long can you exist on fumes."

In the documents, nurses are guaranteed eight hours off between shifts with the caveat that they can agree to less.

What would you do if you are at work and there is no nurse to relieve you and there are patients in the bed," said Hoy. You just can't leave."

ONA agreed to allow HHS to run the callback team for six weeks to avoid closures or scale backs of emergency departments, urgent care, operating rooms (OR) and life-saving treatments.

Hoy says reductions in service are happening across the province far more than the public realizes and she expects the situation to get worse in the fall instead of better.

It's the silent closures that really bother me," she said. I've heard where there's not enough nurses to give people their chemotherapy.

She said beds have quietly closed while attention has been focused on smaller hospitals temporarily shutting down emergency rooms.

ORs are not running at 100 per cent, they're being shut down," she said. Procedure rooms are not running like they should be because there's no nurses. It's a disaster. There's no way you can sugar-coat this problem."

When asked about closures, HHS said in a statement Wednesday: We remain focused on maintaining access to emergent care and our highly specialized regional programs such as stroke, cardiac, cancer and trauma care."

However, the network noted it's having increasing issues sending patients back to their strained home hospitals once they no longer need the specialized regional care provided in Hamilton.

St. Joseph's acknowledged local care is being affected, saying in a statement that the staffing pressures will continue to result in longer wait times for those seeking non-emergency care, as well as temporary service and procedure reductions as we align service capacity to staffing levels."

The Catholic hospital network says it's also doing regular volunteer call-outs to work unfilled shifts and has registered nurses on standby for premium pay." But St. Joseph's didn't give details of how that system works or whether it's also double the normal hourly rate.

We are grateful to all of our health-care workers who continue to work tirelessly and step-up to work unfilled shifts," St. Joseph's said in a statement. Our health-care workers have been under immense pressure ... We remind our community to be kind and patient as our teams care for you."

Both hospital networks urge Hamiltonians to go to needadoc.ca for information on where to get non-emergency medical care locally.

Joanna Frketich is a health reporter at The Spectator. jfrketich@thespec.com