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HAMPERED HEALTHCARE
from Unspoken Magazine
by cmns490
SPOTLIGHT
Hampered Healthcare
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More than two years into the pandemic, healthcare workers face exhaustion and burnout—and they’re leaving the industry altogether. It’s never been more challenging to replace them. by GABRIELE LIESSI
Sam lasted a good 16 months into the pandemic before she couldn’t take it any longer. “I don’t know how, in this kind of crisis, with this kind of pressure on the healthcare system, anybody’s getting the support they need,” she says. And so in late 2021, the community health worker changed jobs, to a gig that took her further from the frontlines. And she’s certainly not the only one.
In B.C., Fraser Health workers phoned in with short-term illnesses more than 7,000 times between January 3 and 9 of 2022, and B.C. Emergency Health Services have recently reported double the absences since the same time period in 2021. According to the Ontario Medical Association survey done in March 2021, as many as three in four healthcare workers in that province have reported symptoms of burnout.
Sam had been feeling the effects of low staffing numbers since March 2020. There was less time to spend with each patient, and more for everyone to take on. But the job switch has made a difference: her mental health has improved since she left the frontline. While there was some guilt for leaving, Sam feels she made the right decision for her mental health.
But replacing those burned-out healthcare workers is proving to be a challenge. Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Katharine Smart told CMAJ News, “There are hundreds of job postings for nursing staff ‘with not a single applicant.’”
While it’s natural for there to be confusion during a public health crisis, the shifting and complicated messaging was one of the other factors that played into Sam switching jobs. “At the beginning, we were feeling really anxious. Why aren’t we getting direction?” she recounts of her previous position. The message changed with each new variant, and the lack of support from the top made it more difficult.
Even today, months after she’s left the field, Sam feels the message now is still not adjusting fast enough. And yet, despite it all, she doesn’t envy those in leadership positions. “Who’s going to do it, right? It’s easy to criticize.” ■
