Ontario Nurses’ Association takes on Orazietti

SooToday.com has received the following response to a David Orazietti news release from Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association.

************************* April 30, 2010

Letter to the Editor SooToday.com

Re: “Orazetti trashes dippers” (SooToday.com, April 28)

Residents of Sault Ste. Marie who have read MPP David Orazetti’s media release should be aware of the cuts to registered nurses at Sault Area Hospital (SAH).

Let’s take a look at the real facts:

Despite the assurances of Mr. Orazetti, the registered nurses of Sault Area Hospital know just how serious the funding situation at SAH is – and know that numerous cuts to RN positions do anything but demonstrate Mr. Orazetti’s party’s “commitment to health care funding.”

While his media release talks about hiring more nurses, what he doesn’t mention is the fact that SAH has cut a number of RN positions and/or beds.

RN care has been cut in SAH’s oncology unit, renal unit, medical day care, surgical and the cancer clinic and critical care baseline staff and pain resource RNs cut, among others.

The emergency department is overcapacity and understaffed, and RNs have serious concerns about their ability to provide the level of care their patients require.

Hallway nursing – where patients who can’t access beds are placed in the hall on a stretcher or bed in medical unit hallways, with a bed sheet hung from the ceiling for privacy – is becoming a daily occurrence. In total, SAH has eliminated more than 29 RN positions, which represents more than 58,000 hours of nursing care annually to our patients.

While Mr. Orazetti talks about the nursing graduate guarantee program, he again doesn’t tell the full story – these guaranteed jobs for nursing graduates are temporary three- to seven-month jobs, not permanent RN positions.

If the state of the Sault Area Hospital and its ever-decreasing RN roster is an indication of what Mr. Orazetti considers to be a record investment in Sault Ste. Marie health care, everyone should be very, very concerned.

The Sault community deserves better.

- Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN, president, Ontario Nurses’ Association

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