Member Stories
We need community support
Emergency nursing has always been a very complicated and demanding job.
Over the past two years, this pandemic has made it even more complicated. For example, many nurses must dress in uncomfortable PPE to protect ourselves and our patients.
It has also made staffing more complicated, because when a nurse becomes a close contact, whether it’s in the ED or in the community, they need to isolate. This can really affect the number of nurses we have working at any time. It can also impact on the range of necessary skills that we have in our ED while staff are in isolation.
What would really help us in our EDs is if we had mandatory ratios of one nurse to three patients.
Safe staffing ratios would ensure we can offer the best possible patient outcomes for our community.
Emergency nurses like me are doing our best to deliver quality healthcare during this pandemic. Now we need our community to support us with our fight for ratios of 1:3 in ED.
Steven Zorgios, RN