More than ten years after the murder of Windsor nurse Lori Dupont, the Ontario Nurses Association is still working to improve on the job safety for its members.
Dupont, a nurse at Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital, was stabbed to death in a recovery room by a doctor December 12, 2005. Dr Marc Daniels committed suicide soon after. An investigation found that Daniels had routinely harassed Dupont.
"The instances of violence in Ontario hospitals is just deplorable," says ONA 1st Vice President Vicki McKenna. "Employers have to step up to the plate and do their job to keep workers safe."
Statistics are collected whenever a healthcare worker is injured, but McKenna admits nurses are sometimes reluctant to report violence. So, it's difficult to say how widespread the problem is, but she says "at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, just in the month of October they had nine incidents where one of our nurses was injured."
She says wherever nurses are unsafe; patients may be at risk too.
"I want the public to know that when nurses are safe, that they're safe," says McKenna. "The violence is as well perpetrated on patients."
At the provincial level, she says a task force is looking into violence in all health facilities including long-term care homes and health units, but particularly in hospitals.
"It's no surprise to anyone who has been in any of our hospitals, certainly in the Windsor area around the overcrowding, around the short-staffing -- situations occurring that cause people to be in a situation when they're anxious," says McKenna.
McKenna says possible solutions include hiring more security guards, conducting risk assessments and having a plan in place to mitigate dangers.
The association represents over 62,000 healthcare workers across Ontario, including 50,000 in hospitals.