Governments must work together to ease nurse burnout, say CFNU and CNA

After shouldering the burden of the pandemic for 22 months, Canada’s nurses and other health care workers are exhausted and demoralized, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and the Canadian Nurses Association said in a statement today that calls for national measures to combat nurse burnout.

In light of the emergence of the highly infectious Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, the presidents of the two organizations said Canadian governments need to work together immediately to develop strategies to encourage nurses to remain in their profession.

Recent preliminary studies show that a third of Canadian nurses are contemplating leaving their health care facility or their profession altogether, said CFNU President Linda Silas and CNA President Tim Guest.

Critical care shortages have been made worse by the large numbers of health care workers unable to work because of isolation requirements, they added.

As a result, anxiety and depression have increased, leading to the loss of more nurses in a system already experiencing shortages that have forced hospitals across Canada to close beds and scale back emergency services.

“We cannot have a functioning health care system without a healthy workforce,” said the statement.

The two nursing organization leaders called for financial incentives to encourage senior nurses to remain in practice, loan-forgiveness programs to support new graduates, and measures to ensure safe working conditions in the face of the physical and mental threats to nurses frequently seen throughout the pandemic.

They also urged the deployment of mental health resources and additional efforts to ensure safe patient-to-nurse ratios.

The CFNU represents nurses’ unions in eight provinces and is the voice of more than 200,000 nurses across Canada. The CNA is the national professional voice of Canada’s nurses. Both organizations advocate in the public interest for a publicly funded, not-for-profit health care system.