Urgent government action needed to tackle COVID-19 healthcare crisis, medical leaders warn

CMA and CNA leaders said summit discussions confirmed that there are high levels of burnout among healthcare workers, chronic understaffing issues and an urgent need for ” government intervention and longer-term support.

There was “such a sense of hopelessness last night,” CMA President Dr. Katharine Smart told reporters in a virtual briefing.

“It’s been almost two years since the first headlines of what we now know to be COVID-19, and since that time healthcare workers have been at the forefront,” CNA President Tim Guest said. .

“Our frontline workers are no longer on the brink of exhaustion,” said Smart. “They are exhausted.”

“No light at the end of this tunnel”

Smart has said the current healthcare crisis is unacceptable and called for immediate relief for healthcare workers in COVID-19 hot areas.

“We need governments to listen to what frontline workers are telling them… 19 months after the start of this pandemic, there is no light at the end of this tunnel.” She said it is incumbent on all levels of government to help “revive” the health system.

Guest said there needs to be a multi-pronged solution to addressing current burnout levels and staffing issues, providing long-term and sustainable mental health supports to healthcare workers, and bringing implement better data collection to identify staffing gaps.

The recognized smart efforts to date, including the mobilization of the Canadian Armed Forces, have been helpful. But she also stressed the need to remove jurisdictional issues around licensure, making it easier for workers to move between provinces.

Canada needs a better plan to manage its health care resources and has long trained too few doctors, Smart said.

“There is no easy solution,” she admitted.

The CMA and other organizations are already working together to lobby the government to create a national health workforce agency to better plan for the future of health human resources, Linda said. Silas, President of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, to the Canadian Press.

WATCH | Health workers are past the “point of exhaustion,” says the head of the nurses’ association:

Health workers “past the point of exhaustion,” says head of nurses’ association

Urgent action is needed to help support Canada’s medical workforce amid a crushing fourth wave of COVID-19, said Tim Guest, president of the Canadian Nurses Association. (Credit: CBC / Evan Mitsui) 0:42

Alberta Health Care Workers Now ‘Demoralized’

Smart said another key demand from Canada’s medical community is for various government officials to take ownership of their role in the current COVID-19 crisis.

“Healthcare workers want our leaders to be honest,” she said.

In hard-hit Alberta, which recently tightened some restrictions and delayed or postponed about 8,500 surgeries to deal with a wave of largely unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, Guest said healthcare teams are “extremely demoralized “while the global system is on. on the verge of collapse.

Healthcare workers also shared stories of fear of entering and leaving work, for fear of being accosted by members of the public, he said.

“We just can’t have these extra constraints.”