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WorkSafeBC is investigating the deaths of two people after being trapped under glass sheets in Richmond in mid-October.
Emergency personnel were called to the scene Oct. 12 around 9 a.m. in the 16000-block of River Road, close to No. 7 Road.
Richmond Fire-Rescue – who included the information in their monthly report to city council – arrived at the scene and determined the two workers had died. Soon thereafter, they were joined by paramedics who confirmed the deaths.
Richmond Fire-Rescue crew members helped remove the glass off the two bodies using airbags.
WorkSafeBC and the RCMP Special Crimes Unit also were on scene.
According to WorkSafeBC, the two people who died were employees, but they didn’t say who they were working for at the time of the incident.
WorkSafeBC said the primary purpose of their investigation is to determine the cause of the incident as well as any contributing factors, “so that similar incidents can be prevented from happening in the future.”
Overworked and lack of staff are only two of many reasons some nurses are quitting Richmond Hospital, according to Aman Grewal, president of the BC Nurses Union.
Grewal said a nursing crisis has been going on for decades and the pandemic has only highlighted that fact.
“We know that nurses are quitting at Richmond General Hospital due to overwork, stress and the lack of nursing staff available to help with the workload,” said Grewal.
“Our nurses are tired everywhere. We hear it locally, on the Island and in the Interior.”
According to a recent survey conducted for the union, 35 per cent of B.C. nurses surveyed said they are considering leaving the profession in the next two years due to the pandemic.
Grewal said the lack of staff in the ER and in various departments has resulted in nurses being redeployed throughout the hospital.
She explained that nurses are continuously being moved around from their original units to another unit where there is a need for more staff, which adds to the mental exhaustion nurses face.
“This is happening everywhere. Nurses are taken from one area to better support one area in dire situations.”
The high number of deaths nurses have to see, especially in ER, is also contributing to their mental exhaustion and burnout, said Grewal.
“(Prior to COVID-19) you may see one death every couple weeks, but now at times you could be seeing several in one shift,” she added.
As well, the lack of staff resources and heavy workload may potentially also cause physical injury to nurses, such as sprains or strains while working without sufficient rest.
Finally, the lack of resources is impacting patient care, said Grewal.
Pre-pandemic, one nurse would attend to four patients on average. Now, nurses are attending up to six or seven patients.
“This limits the time nurses can spend with their patients in order for them to get to everyone, and we can’t provide the best care for patients (this) way,” said Grewal.
In order for staffing needs to be met, the provincial government projected that B.C. needs close to 24,000 nurses in healthcare by 2029.
BCNU is calling on the government for a comprehensive plan to recruit nurses now and for the future, while developing strategies to retain those already in the profession.
More than 120 staff at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton have been placed on leave after Halton Public Health banned unvaccinated staff from working at the jail last week amid a COVID-19 outbreak, according to a union memo obtained by the Star.
The combination of outbreak control measures and staffing shortages is raising concerns for both inmates and staff at the jail, which has seen frequent lockdowns through the pandemic particularly during an outbreak at the start of the year that spread through 250 inmates and 100 staff members.
There are 80 cases linked to the current outbreak, according to Halton Public Health. As of Dec. 1, according to the Ministry of the Solicitor General, there were 36 active inmate cases.
The majority of the unvaccinated staff, including correctional officers, were placed on unpaid leave as of Dec. 1 due to a public health order issued by local officials, outraging union leadership who say staff had been following Ontario Public Service rules. Those rules had allowed unvaccinated workers to submit to regular antigen testing as an alternative to vaccination.
The weekend memo from OPSEU Local 234 president Peter Figliola says 124 staff members working at Maplehurst are affected by the new requirement, including 16 people assigned to a unit housing inmates from the Ontario Correctional Institute which closed down after a major outbreak last year. As of 2019, the jail employed 440 correctional officers. The local represented 1,078 members from Maplehurst and the neighbouring women’s jail.
“The focus of this isn’t about who is vaccinated and who isn’t, the focus of this is these individuals were in compliance with an OPS mandate and they were punished for it,” Figliola said an in an interview. The public health order does not stipulate that unvaccinated staff should be placed on unpaid leave.
Figliola said staff who are able to work at the jail are doing their best and working 12 to 14 hours days and through breaks in order to keep the facility operating, as other staff members are facing an unknown amount of time without pay.
“I feel like we are being used as a test run to see what the reaction is for the rest of the province,” he said. He noted that proof of vaccination or testing is not a requirement for visitors to provincial jails and said the union had been asking for this to be addressed for weeks.
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