ONA delivers 58 recommendations to expert panel reviewing province's health and safety system
Ontario’s health-care facilities lag decades behind the rest of the workforce and fail to meet even the minimum health and safety standards, according to the head of the union representing nurses.
Representatives from the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) presented 58 recommendations on June 28 in Mississauga, Ont., to the expert advisory panel that is reviewing the province’s occupational health and safety system.
"Despite very high stakes and the implications for RNs and health care providers, we are far behind industrial health and safety leaders, as we saw clearly during the SARS outbreak," said Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the ONA. "Other industries have embraced occupational health and safety as a core value, but ironically, health care providers face far more dangerous working conditions with much less protection." ONA's review of the state of OHS found serious deficits in protecting health care workers from illness and injury — and the risk extends to patient safety as well, it charged. ONA is calling for the provincial government to implement the 58 recommendations, particularly because of the potential benefits to RNs, patients and the public of making OH&S a core value. ONA's submission to the Expert Panel focused on four main areas, and recommendations include: •The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care — at the highest levels — must publicly commit to occupational health and safety laws and principles, and ensure top-down education and personal accountability throughout the government and the health-care sector.
•Remove prevention from the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB). There must be a broadening of enforcement, and preventive and reactive enforcement in the Ministry of Labour. Inspectors must be empowered to more easily enforce accountability from the top down.
•Legislative amendments are required to expand the powers of health care Joint Health and Safety Committees and address reprisals that are now occurring.
•Training standards must be established and enforced for all. In addition, ONA is urging that a more accurate picture of OHS be developed — the Ministry of Labour should develop its own database of injuries and "near misses" based on reporting requirements in the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Currently, the WSIB keeps statistics which ONA claims are “grossly inaccurate.” The ONA also recommends that occupational health and safety criteria/requirements should be built into accountability agreements, physician privileges agreements and performance standards/measures for health-care employers, officers, directors and managers and that the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should not grant emergency funding for defence of occupational health and safety law violators. The full submission to the expert panel is available on ONA's website at http://bit.ly/dhin0p. ONA is the union representing 55,000 front-line registered nurses and allied health professionals and more than 12,000 nursing student affiliates providing care in Ontario hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community and industry.
