CUPE Article on RPNs' Scope of Practice in Ontario

The article reproduced below (find the original here) gives another perspective on an issue that’s very similar to the one affecting health facilities in rural communities on PEI. What’s your take? Do you think that some of the pressures facing rural hospitals and their emergency rooms in particular could be eased by expanding LPNs’ scope of practice as this article suggests? Are we even at a stage where we can consider expanding LPNs’ scope of practice when they are limited by their scope of employment?

RPNs can ease ER crisis at Huron Perth’s Seaforth – Another rural hospital cuts services as McGuinty government turns its back

January 28, 2009 11:09 AM

LONDON, Ont. – Expanding the scope of practice for Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) can ease the Emergency Room (ER) crisis at Seaforth Community Hospital, says Michael Hurley, President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions OCHU/CUPE, which represents 40 workers at Seaforth. “We have to respond to the shortage of nurses,” Hurley says. “But cutting emergency room (ER) services is not an acceptable way to respond to inadequate resources or staffing.”

Hurley encouraged hospitals to expand the scope of practice of RPNs, graduates of a two-year program, to better serve the public.

“By realigning nursing duties across the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance and using RPNs appropriately, we can address the nursing shortage at Seaforth,” Hurley says.
As of February 7, Seaforth Community Hospital will cut its 24-hour ER down to 12 hours, and remain open only from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Hospital officials say that ambulances will be diverted to other hospitals during the shut-down times.

But Hurley warned that it is the chronic underfunding of the health system underlies ER closures at Seaforth, and elsewhere, and not just the nursing shortage.

“Cutting ER services is a direct response to the financial pressures on the health care system,” Hurley says. “This is yet another example of a rural hospital losing services in a wave of underfunding and restructuring that the McGuinty government is forcing onto hospitals.”

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Contact:
Michael Hurley, President, OCHU/CUPE, cell: 416.884.0770

David Robbins, CUPE Communications, cell: 613.878.1431