TORONTO, ON, October 20, 2025 – Citing the failure of health-care employers and the Ford government to take effective action to protect nurses and health-care professionals from workplace violence, the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) has launched a new, comprehensive ad campaign.
“ONA is calling a ‘Code Black and Blue’ in our new advertising campaign,” says Provincial President Erin Ariss, RN. “With virtually every nurse and health-care professional experiencing workplace violence, we are using the phrase to reveal the reality of a bruised and battered workforce and call a code for urgent action as we do in our hospitals.”
Ariss says, “We know how to stop never-ending physical and verbal assaults against nurses. Yet our employers and the provincial government have refused to take the measures shown to greatly reduce the violence we face daily, including mandated safe staffing levels.”
ONA’s ad campaign features real front-line nurses talking about workplace violence and drawing back the curtain on a shocking reality many people are not aware of. “Nurses and health-care workers deliver their own raw – yet professional – stories, thoughts, feelings and solutions in their own words,” says Ariss. “Ontarians are not used to seeing nurses be vulnerable, but it’s important that people understand what we are experiencing while at work and what is driving so many away from their jobs.”
She says it is a “shocking double standard that the safety of other first responders, such as firefighters and EMS personnel, are taken so seriously while nurses are expected to just tolerate it. With this campaign, nurses are speaking out and saying we will no longer accept violence and won’t rest until we have safe staffing ratios like other first responders.”
The ads began appearing in transit shelters across the province and on a dedicated microsite on October 13. Ads will continue with social media, television and in print newspapers over the next five weeks.
ONA is the union representing 68,000 registered nurses and health-care professionals, as well as more than 18,000 nursing student affiliates, providing care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community, clinics, and industry.
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