‘Code White’ are two words no Ontario hospital worker wants to hear.
Code White means a violent attack is taking place against a hospital worker and that person needs help.
Details released at a Sudbury news conference Tuesday morning revealed that a surge of violent behaviour, sexual assault and racially-motivated attacks are being directed towards health workers in Sudbury and across Northern Ontario.
The information was based on a poll carried out in May 2022 by Oracle Research for the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
The polling indicated that Ontario hospitals are becoming "increasingly toxic and dangerous workplaces," said Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of CUPE - OCHU.
Richer said part of the solution would involve the province spending more money that so that hospitals have enough workers to respond when a Code White call is sounded.
"The Ford government needs to act now," Richer told reporters.
"We have patients who are brutally beating our members, throwing coffee at them, you know, hitting them with things that they have in their hands such as dietary trays; throwing chairs at them, grabbing their arm scratching them, and you know, this needs to stop. We need to see funding poured into these hospitals where they can hire enough appropriate staff to help with care," Richer said.
She added that worker shortages at hospitals and other health venues are contributing to the level of patient anger and frustrating.
Imagine a patient pushing a call buzzer for 15 minutes without response, or having to get care on a stretcher in a hallway with no privacy, Richer said.
"The patients become angry and very frustrated. And that's when they lash out," Richer said.
One of those speaking up about Sudbury was David Tremblay, a support service worker in the environmental service department at Health Sciences North.
"So I do work mostly nights. And I will tell you right now that Code Whites are quite frequently called in emergency, especially nightly," Tremblay said.
"A Code White would be a violent situation, a patient acting violently, but usually just a patient acting inappropriately violently towards the staff or to someone else. And this is an ongoing nightly, daily issue that goes on there. Personally, I know I have been bitten at work. I have been spat at, and I've actually, I would say, have been sexually assaulted or harassed by clients or patients at the hospital."
Tremblay acknowledged that people will get frustrated and upset by wait times, or by being in pain or by being on medication, but he said that is still no excuse for inappropriate or criminal behavior.
"No, if it's not acceptable in regular society, like people are in pain on the streets, people are in pain and clinics and but if you're in pain in the hospital, it's no different than being in pain on the street. We just ask that you kind of treat everybody there with the same respect as you would as a normal person on the streets," he said.
HSN revealed last month that it has canceled hospital security being done on a contract basis and has created its own in-house security team. Both Tremblay and Richer said that was a step in the right direction.
"Staffing shortages were not just to nurses and not just to nursing staff. It was, you know, across the board. It was to housekeeping staff, it was to dietary staff, it was to PSWs. And it was also to security at one point which was contracted out, and so they were suffering as well," Tremblay said.
"I can remember there were nights where there was two security guards or day shifts where there was only two security guards for the entire hospital. Now we have a consistent staff. So that's a step in the right direction, making people feel safe," he added.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
