CUPE raises concerns about health-care staffing shortages in Sudbury, Ont.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has called on the Health Sciences North hospital in Sudbury, Ont., to hire 120 more staff to address shortages in health care.

"We're seeing a turnover rate of 14.95 per cent," said Dave Verch, first vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, CUPE.

"Unprecedented loss of health-care workers, experienced health-care workers, and we're just seeing so many more vacancies and the inability of hospitals to staff positions."

Verch has been visiting hospitals across Ontario, and said the issue of understaffing has been consistent in every city he has seen.

"Every hospital is telling us the same thing," he said. "Health care workers are just getting burnt out. So it's a very common thread we're seeing across the entire province."

Bryan Keith, president of CUPE Local 4705, which represents city staff, including 152 paramedics, said the city has lost 12 paramedics since January.

"Everybody's going through the same scenarios," Keith said.

"Unfortunately, staffing across the entire province has taken an extreme hit in regards to paramedics. You know, it's no different for us than it is anywhere else."

Sudbury paramedic Rick Sasseville, who also chairs CUPE Local 4705's inside unit, said morale is down among his peers.

Sasseville said part-time paramedics are working full-time hours, but without the benefits their full-time colleagues get.

"These medics are put under extreme situations where they're responding hungry, they're responding fatigued to calls that require highly complex interventions, drug administrations," he said.

"We have excellent support from our base hospital system, but there's only so much that a paramedic can do when they're tired and they're looking for, you know, some sort of relief."

Sasseville said if the hospital had more beds available for emergency care it would provide some relief for the city's paramedics. 

But he added they've had minimal staffing increases in the last 20 years.

CUPE has called on the province to create a plan to address the staffing shortages in health care, and to repeal Bill 124, which caps the salary increases of public sector employees to one per cent per year, over a three-year period.