'Ready, willing and able': COVID-19 vaccine policies at Ontario hospitals are keeping some health workers from filling dire staff shortages
CTV
Despite Ontario no longer requiring health-care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, all of the province's 140 public hospitals continue to enforce a mandatory vaccination policy, leaving some experienced front-line workers in the dust as facilities face a staffing crisis.
About 160 veteran nurses, personal support workers and health-care technicians, along with their families, gathered in a church hall in Port Perry, Ont., in person or by video conference, on a snowy afternoon this past Saturday.
These distressed individuals have a message for patients waiting for health care in the province: we want to work on the front lines but are being shut out.
“I am ready, willing and able to work,” Lori Turnbull told CTV National News. But nobody will hire her.
The 58-year-old once worked in surgery and rehabilitation but was fired a year ago from a hospital in London, Ont., after a 30-year career.
In fact, all of the health workers in this unusual audience were terminated after declining to get two COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021, as required by all 140 of Ontario’s public hospitals and some nursing and retirement homes.
“I worked in emergency ... for 20 years,” Casie Desveaux, a nurse from Hamilton, Ont., told CTV National News “I dedicated myself to that job.”
She now says she works in an office for her brother. She knows her hospital remains seriously understaffed.
