LETTER: Nurse, doctor shortage drive health-care woes

SooToday received the following letter to the editor from reader Abigail Obenchain in response to multiple letters about health-care system.

SooToday has recently published several letters/articles containing inaccurate information about our health-care system and its challenges. Those inaccuracies need to be called out.

One letter writer blamed backups in our local hospital on only doctors being able to order tests.

I am surprised that there are still people who are not aware that the current top factor driving hospital capacity issues all across Canada is not test-ordering privileges, but rather a dire shortage of nurses.

The other key issue is a massive shortage of family doctors, leading many to seek primary care in hospital emergency departments. Administrative issues such as who can order tests may be a factor, but they pale in comparison with the impacts of not having enough nurses and family doctors.

Another letter writer asserted there is statistical evidence that private health-care systems such as are available in the U.S. offer improved services through a wider range of choices.

I can offer plenty of stats showing the exact opposite, including that despite the U.S. spending more per capita on healthcare than any other country, millions of Americans have no health coverage at all, that many millions more have steep deductibles and hefty co-payments that limit their access to care, and that about two-thirds of American bankruptcies are due to medical costs.

Furthermore, the U.S. has some of the worst health outcomes in the developed world, most notably, the highest fetal/maternal death rate. They also have shorter lifespans than Canadians do. It is not a system to emulate.

The article in which our MPP Ross Romano trumpeted everything the Ford Government is allegedly doing to fix healthcare is the icing on the misinformation cake.

He at least admitted that we have a nurse shortage, but then pointed at the Sault College nursing program as the fix. That’s ridiculous. Our health-care system is bleeding experienced nurses far faster than they can be replaced by new grads, thanks to the province slapping a salary cap on nurses and other health-care workers early in the pandemic.

I remain astonished that a party that claims to be business-savvy thinks capping salaries during a worker shortage is a good idea. In a shortage, you pay more. That’s Economic 101.

Furthermore, newly graduated nurses cannot possibly make up for the catastrophic loss of so many experienced nurses, especially in units requiring highly skilled staff, such as surgery and intensive care.

Romano also lauded moving some surgeries out of hospitals as a fix.

Don’t fall for these smoke-and-mirrors moves. This is unlikely to have a significant impact on hospital capacity. Remember, we have a dire nurse shortage. All opening up surgeries outside hospitals will do is lure even more nurses out of our public hospitals.

If you want to know what’s really going on in our health-care system, stop listening to politicians. Go on Twitter and follow Ontario doctors and nurses. You will hear the same themes over and over again:

• Our health-care system is being crippled by a terrible nurse shortage and way too few family doctors.
• Nurses are angry and demoralized by job stress and the salary cap.
• There is no incentive for nurses to stay in stressful hospital work, especially emergency departments, where they get tons of abuse from patients.
• We need major incentives for young doctors to choose family medicine, which will reduce pressure on hospitals — but not in the short run. It won’t be a quick fix.
• Investment in the public system is what’s needed — all privatization will do is further sabotage the public system and hike costs because stockholders’ pocketbooks will always be the priority.

Abigail Obenchain, Sault Ste. Marie