Personal support workers (PSWs) are worried about patient care and their fellow staff members being spread too thin come May when 39 PSWs are set to be laid off from Guelph General Hospital.
PSWs began working at the hospital in 2021 and now in order of seniority, 25 PSWs get to keep their jobs while the rest are laid off.
Out of the 25, 19 are full-time and six are part-time staff. During the night shift there will be four PSWs on and during the day shift there will be seven for the building, said Cheryl Brodie-Campbell, chief steward at CUPE Local 57 and GGH PSW. “I don’t know how we’re going to do this,” she said in her remarks at the rally.
There was a rally with over 50 people outside of GGH in front of the emergency department on the grass and sidewalks on Monday. People held their signs, some under clear rain ponchos, and shouted rallying words like “solidarity.”
“And the sad truth is this hospital has a deficit of $12 million,” said Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE, in his remarks at the rally. “Like many hospitals in this province as a result, it’s cutting staff at the same time that the population of Guelph is aging and growing and the demand here is so significant that in two-thirds of cases this hospital can not meet provincial targets to admit patients on time from its ER. That’s the reality.”
Brodie-Campbell has worked at GGH since 1991 and she can’t remember a lay-off this big before.
“I’m scared for these patients,” said Brodie-Campbell, in an interview. “They take a special part in your heart. That’s why you work in hospital or in a long-term care is because you truly care for the patients in the bed and this just feels so wrong."
Behind every nurse is a PSW, said Tammy McGlone, PSW at GGH, who isn’t getting laid off since she has seniority.
“Bare bones to it all is the nurses don’t have time to do what we do,” said Brandy Wilson, PSW at GGH, who is set to be laid off.
A former GGH PSW, Emma Lake, who left to go to school came to the rally to support the PSWs. “They have other responsibilities to focus on and rightfully so. But we’re here to give hands on care and the nurses can’t do that, they can’t do that without us. And they’re going to try but they’re going to fail, not to any fault of their own,” said Lake.
Physically it’s not possible and even when PSWs are there, nurses are struggling, she said.
“We were already stretched and thin enough as nurses without the support staff,” said Mark Zinger, vice-president of CUPE Local 57 and a registered practical nurse at GGH, in an interview, referencing what it was like before PSWs started at the hospital.
PSWs are vital and key to patient care to get patients discharged, said Zinger.
“But it is very neglectful for the hospital to make this decision when they are also going to be liable for these types of situations,” said Zinger. He can’t always get to things like getting patients out of bed when he’s already busy with things like vitals and head-to-toe assessments.
The impacts are two-fold with the first being patient care with things propping up like bed sores, malnourishment, muscle deterioration if patients aren’t up and moving around. The other is nursing staff won’t stay in the profession because “there is no job satisfaction with this type of work environment,” said Zinger.
People’s loved ones coming into the hospital "unfortunately will not get the proper care that they need and deserve and pay for,” said Zinger. It's a provincial funding issue making its way to local hospitals that is the cause of this, he said.
