Registered Nurses from South Bruce Grey Health Centre Call Out Management for Failing the Community and Staff, ER Closures Will Risk Peoples’ Lives

DURHAM, ON, May 14, 2024 – Registered nurses working for South Bruce Grey Health Centre are horrified at the decision of South Bruce Grey Health Centre to permanently close beds at its Durham site, cut ER hours and transfer registered nurses (RNs) to other sites.

“With the planned closure of all inpatient beds at the Durham site, if an emergency department patient requires admission they may have to be transferred to Kincardine – an hour away,” says Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) Provincial President Erin Ariss, RN. “This is a disgrace and an insult to the residents of Durham.

“Let’s be clear: this employer has failed miserably when it comes to retaining its registered nurses and recruiting additional nurses,” says Ariss. “As an emergency department RN myself for several decades, I can tell you that minutes can mean the difference between life and death for some patients, and the plan to close the ER for 14 hours out of every day will cost lives. Why would management believe that the lives and health-care access of residents of rural communities count less than elsewhere?”

Ariss notes that in other communities, most recently Windsor, hospital management has successfully recruited more RNs with incentives such as signing bonuses. “This employer may say they have tried to recruit more nurses, but simply posting a job is not trying hard enough,” she says. “While Ontario continues to have the worst RN-to-population ratio in all of Canada, good employers are managing to hire. Clearly, there is an issue with management here.

“Our RNs are on the front lines,” says Ariss. “They have proposed solutions and gone to extraordinary lengths to avert the decisions this employer is making that will result in harm to patients and have been met with a brick wall. This community needs access to all the current in-patient beds it has now, it needs an accessible, local ER open at all times at all sites, but what it lacks is an employer willing to work with its staff to make that happen. It is an outrage.”

ONA is the union representing 68,000 registered nurses and health-care professionals, as well as 18,000 nursing students, providing care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community, clinics and industry.

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To arrange an interview, contact:

ONA Media Relations, media@ona.org