Jenn Miller is a registered nurse in Ontario.
In this installation of Insights, Miller reacts to an IJB investigation which found nurses working in acute medical units at Niagara Health Services hospitals were sometimes assigned 10 patients each.
Nursing was my first love. I remember the pride I felt in joining a respected, trusted profession. I was honoured to serve my community as a critical care nurse—and I still am, 26 years later.
But today I rarely boast about being a nurse. Crushing workloads have robbed me of the honour I once felt.
Nursing isn’t always about lifesaving infusions or cutting-edge interventions made sexy on TV shows. It’s about subtle acts of humanity that bring dignity to patients, like washing the blood out of a woman’s hair or ensuring a man recovering from surgery has a clean bed to sleep in. Those gifts of dignity give patients the strength to keep going and recover.
I’m grateful for the core memories that shaped the nurse I became—moments back when there was time to deliver real care. Time to feel, to connect, to be empathetic and compassionate.
Sometimes you even catch something important, like a critical neurological change, because you had the time to talk with your patient.
Sometimes it’s a simple hand squeeze that keeps you going.
Those precious moments kept me vigilant and passionate.
But those moments are few and far between now because time has been stolen from us.
Workloads in Ontario have become unmanageable, creating unsafe environments for both nurses and patients. As healthcare budgets shrink, the solution seems to be squeezing more out of fewer nurses—doubling, even tripling our workload. Hospitalized patients require my time – to be present, to listen, to care.
Gone are the days of washing hair; now, we can barely keep up with basic needs like feeding and injecting medications.
Gone too is the self-respect, the pride that I once felt to be a registered nurse.
And still, every single day, nurses in Ontario show up—overworked, morally injured—and demand better safety. Safety for our patients. Safety for ourselves.
It’s not infrequent that, during my drive home from work while stopped at a red light, I ask myself, “Did I do everything I could for my patient?”
After a moment of reflection, it hits—a sinking feeling that you could have done more or that you forgot something. Panic sets in. The self-talk begins: You failed as a nurse. Nurses like me take full ownership for these lapses, no matter how small. The self-criticism that follows makes us feel terrible.
Day after day, night after night, this silent failure narrative causes moral injury which fuels anxiety, depression, and sometimes suicide among nurses. It drives us to leave the profession.
The truth is, short staffing is like drunk driving. Sometimes we make it home safely. Sometimes, tragedy strikes. But all of the time, we are in danger. We know that patient mortality rates rise when nurses are over assigned.
Nurses in Ontario are set up to fail. Record-breaking emergency room closures, lengthy wait times, and millions desperate for primary care providers dominate news headlines.
Lost in this are the nurses who power hospitals. We are suffering. We are struggling. And, more and more, we are quitting.
On an airplane, they tell you to don your own oxygen mask in an emergency before assisting someone else. It’s time for nurses to don their masks. Nurses must set boundaries that prioritize the safety of patients and our own wellbeing. We must do everything we can to ensure safety is never negotiable.
Safe nurse-to-patient ratios save patient lives—and nurses’ careers.
Read the Investigation
Nurses in the Niagara Health System are facing overwhelming patient loads that are undermining care and risk triggering staff burnout, according to internal hospital documents obtained by the Investigative Journalism Bureau.
Workload reports filed by front-line nurses repeatedly call for staffing levels like those that have been mandated in other jurisdictions to improve the quality of care.