school in June, and as she stands on the cusp of her career and scans the state of the profession, two things become abundantly clear.They’ve been schooled on this.The pandemic brought into sharp focus what some had long been saying: that there was a critical shortage of nurses and that both nurses and patients would suffer because of it. With COVID-19’s brutal lessons mostly behind them,
“No one really wants to put themselves in a position where they think that they’ll struggle with burnout or anything like that,” says Bulchand, 25, currently finishing up a placement at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. “And the world of nursing is really great in the sense that we can really work anywhere. And a lot of the hospitals and outpatient clinics are really in need.”
She can turn to the west and see that British Columbia has implemented mandatory minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, long touted by nursing experts as one of the most effective ways to mitigate a nursing crisis by making working conditions more palatable. “I really value things like good unit culture, units that really prioritize excellent patient care,” says Bulchand.
But history — as written in California and Australia, both of which have implemented nurse-to-patient ratios — suggests that where those ratios exist, nurse recruitment and retention ceases to be a concern, hospital costs decrease and patient outcomes, overall, are better. She’s referring in part to Ontario’s wage restraint law, Bill 124, which capped salary increases for public sector workers, such as nurses, at one per cent a year for three years. That law was ruled unconstitutional by the province’s top court, but the Ford government is appealing the decision.