Exhausted nurses have 'had enough,' leader says as N.L. rallies highlight staffing shortage
CBC
Health-care workers are feeling understaffed and overworked, with many saying enough is enough.
It's been a point of contention in Newfoundland and Labrador for a long time, with health-care professionals from doctors to paramedics feeling the pressures of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, overflowing emergency rooms and a dwindling workforce.
On Friday the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) is mobilizing in an information picket blitz to demand urgent action to fix what they're calling a nursing crisis, not only in Newfoundland and Labrador, but across the country.
On the home front, 15 locations across N.L. — from St. John's to Happy Valley-Goose Bay — will see nurses and their supporters on Friday.
"The crisis is the shortage within the healthcare workforce. If you look at our country as a whole, we have over 100,000 healthcare workers missing from the system," CFNU president Linda Silas told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show.
"That's from physicians to personal-care workers."
In Newfoundland and Labrador, Silas said there's a 30 per cent shortage on registered nurses and about 20 per cent of currently working registered nurses are ready to retire.
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