By Zara Lyshkow
Over the past two years, ICU shortages have been at an all-time high due to the global pandemic, Covid 19. This has had a detrimental effect due to the fact that the fewer ICU workers, the harder it will be for the whole hospital to run and to help the patients needing care. An intensive unit nurse named Birgit Umaigba says that "Things are worse now, and I don't think the general public understands how difficult it is to be a patient or a nurse."
Across Ontario, several hospitals had to close down due to the loss of staff. In June of 2022 Canadian hospitals reported that nearly 137,000 jobs now, in fact, had openings, and sadly that's only in the first quarter of 2022. This news is shocking as it's nearly double the number of openings as 2020. The reason that there have been so many shortages is due to the long and grueling hours that both nurses and doctors have had to face due to the tiresome pandemic. And it’s not only the hours that have worsened, there have been fewer breaks and vacations for staff as well. It’s been known that 2,600 nurses were considering quitting their jobs due to the grueling working conditions that they were put under.
The federal government is trying to re-hire their employees and trying to get their hospitals up to full capacity, it will most likely take years for hospitals around the globe to get health services back to what it was before the pandemic, but hopefully, all hospital workers will get the hours and vacations that they finally deserve, and decide that they want to get back into the hospital working environment.