Professional Practice
Practice and Workload Issues
All regulated health-care professionals (RHPA, 1991) have Standards of Practice that require them to report their concerns when they are unable to meet their accountabilities set out by their regulatory body.
We have developed the Professional Responsibility and Workload (PRW) process to resolve professional practice and workload issues. Completing the Professional Responsibility Workload Form (PRWF) fulfills the member’s obligations to their college.
ONA members are health-care professionals who have the privilege to regulate themselves as individual practitioners and to standardize their practice through a health regulatory college. Each college is responsible for governing its members according to the RHPA and enforcing standards of practice and conduct. All health-care professionals are accountable to ensure their practice is consistent with the standards of practice and guidelines as required by their health regulatory colleges.
It is the responsibility of each health-care professional to ensure they provide, facilitate, advocate and promote the best possible care for their patient/client/resident. By seeking assistance and reporting concerns related to the workload or practice issues through the completion of PRWRFs, ONA members fulfill their accountabilities in accordance with their health regulatory college standards of practice.
Below are some of the key practice issues that members have identified that may have an impact on quality care and other health-care issues.
As a member, the supporting research can assist you in discussing your Professional Responsibility Workload Report Form (PRWRF) with your manager. As a Bargaining Unit President (BUP) or Professional Practice Workload (PRW) Representative, the supporting research can assist you at your Labour Management meetings in representing members positions. The two main categories explored are staffing/quality of care and the environment.
Appropriate staffing requires adequate baseline staffing and replacement resources to ensure positive patient outcomes, safety, and quality of care.
Quality of care is measured by many dimensions. High quality care is evidence-based, focused on the patient, safe and timely.
It is very difficult to provide safe, ethical and quality nursing care when faced with issues related to professional practice, including:
Appropriate staffing is not dependent merely upon the numbers of nurses providing care, but involves having nurses with:
Other health-care providers can include: Auxiliary, Clerical, Housekeeping, Support Workers, Laboratory, Radiology, Support workers and Agency usage.
For years now, Ontario has had a nursing shortage that continues to this day, recruitment and retention are still key issues for organizations when options remain scarce.
We believe that it is the right of all our members to work in healthy and safe work environments. Unless members inform the employer of care concerns by filling out the PRWRF, the employer will assume patient care is satisfactory and/or that members are willing to tolerate the high-risk work environment.
The work environment is multi-faceted; it doesn’t usually involve just one issue but many.
Physical layout may be an obvious issue, but it may be just one among many in the workplace environment that can lead to PRW issues. Some of these concerns/issues include:
A healthy work environment includes one in which leaders provide the structures, practices and policies that enable clinical nurses to engage in the work processes and relationships essential to provide safe and quality patient care outcomes.
Completing a Professional Responsibility Workload Report Form is one of the best ways to meet your professional practice standards. It allows you to document and report concerns and make recommendations to improve the quality of patient/client/resident care.
Complete the form when your workload or working conditions compromise your ability to meet the College of Nurses of Ontario Standards and/or when your ability to provide safe, ethical and quality care is compromised.
Our interactive Ask a Specialist Sessions give ONA members and leaders the opportunity to learn directly from staff specialists on a range of topics.
Sessions on Professional Practice issues run virtually, via Zoom, the first and third Tuesday of each month from 11 a.m. to noon ET.
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