The crimes of Elizabeth Wettlaufer have rightly shocked, hurt, and challenged the moral beliefs of many of us. But they have also shone a much-needed spotlight onto some of the gaps in our health system.
By now, her story is well-known.
While working as a Registered Nurse at a long-term care home in Woodstock, she began injecting some residents with insulin, in some cases resulting in deaths, in others causing severe pain and suffering to her victims. In the end, she confessed to and was charged with aggravated assault and murder for those cases.
This unthinkable tragedy led the Ontario government to call a public inquiry into the Safety and Security of Residents in the Long-Term Care Homes System. As a professional association, RPNAO made it a priority to be a key participant in the inquiry hearings to stand up and defend the interests of Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) and make recommendations. Our staff and lawyers were there day in and night out throughout the duration of the public hearings.
This past July (2020), commissioner Eileen E. Gillese released her inquiry report and proposed 91 thoughtful recommendations aimed at ensuring resident safety within long-term care homes.
These are important and necessary recommendations, many of which we had advocated for during the hearings. These recommendations must be taken seriously and acted upon swiftly by the government, long-term care providers, and the broader health community, including those of us who represent frontline health professionals. But the inquiry has also raised the question about the quality of care we’re offering older Ontarians.
Is being safe enough?
We can and should do more to ensure that Ontario’s elderly population receives the care and attention they deserve. Regardless of one’s physical and cognitive well-being, older Ontarians should experience joy, fulfillment, and agency. Those who helped build this province in their youth deserve nothing less.
As life expectancies grow and our population continues to age, the pressure on our hospitals will only increase. Caring for older Ontarians outside of a hospital setting, within their own home or communities is not only more cost-effective, but it is also much more people-centric.
That’s why Ontario’s 45,000 RPNs, many of whom work in the long-term care sector, welcomed the government’s recent commitment to add 15,000 new long-term care beds across the province over five years, as well as their promise to provide new funding to help address the recommendations of the Gillese report. You can be sure we’ll be working closely with them to turn these recommendations into action.
But adding more long-term care beds to the system is just part of the solution. All the beds in the world won’t help address the fact that not enough frontline health professionals are choosing to work in these community settings.
What this means for older Ontarians who require care is that their nurses and personal support workers are barely able to get them out of bed or help them take their medications on time, let alone provide compassionate care and full assessments. Evergrowing workloads and the increasing complexity of older Ontarians’ needs will continue to impact nurses’ abilities to provide people with optimal health at each stage of life.
So, what can we do about it?
One thing the Ford government can do right now that will have an immediate impact is to target additional funding towards the hiring of more frontline health professionals, particularly nurses, into the long-term care sector.
Ontario has been experiencing a nursing shortage for years now, and this shortage is expected to worsen as the demands on the system continue to grow. Nurses must have more capacity if we want older Ontarians to experience the quality of life they deserve within a sustainable health system.
We need to ensure sufficient nursing care time to allow for adequate assessment, monitoring, and planning of individualized care to meet the needs of our aging population.
And perhaps as importantly, we need to make sure residents maintain dignity and fulfillment into their golden years.
The crimes that necessitated the Gillese report were shocking and we, as a society and as health professionals, must address the root causes that allowed them to occur. But we should also look to the future and work to build an elder care system that can be the envy of the world.
Going forward, let’s use the inquiry recommendations to guide sound care practices and challenge ourselves to have a greater vision for how our grandparents, parents and, ultimately we, experience life’s senior years.
This vision should look beyond simple compliance by always aiming to provide older Ontarians with the kind of life we’d all want and have the right to expect in our older years.
Nurses and other frontline health professionals are ready to lead the change.
Dianne Martin, RPN, RN
WeRPN, Chief Executive Officer
