Nurses took to the streets last month at 26 hospitals in 15 cities across Ontario – including Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa – days after the IJB and the Toronto Star published a story on how nurses are overburdened by unregulated patient loads.
Low nurse-to-patient ratios can significantly undermine the quality of care and cause staff burnout.
The IJB investigation found nurses in acute surgical and medical wards can care for as many as 10 patients at a time. While British Columbia and several U.S. and Australian states have imposed ratios of no more than 1:4 or 1:5 nurses per patient, Ontario failed to pass legislation that would enforce safe nurse-to-patient ratios.
“The only way we’re going to get proper staffing and people staying in nursing is to have better ratios,” said Paul LoStracco, a registered nurse the IJB interviewed at a rally outside Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
“We want to make sure that staffing ratios are instituted and [we] have that number of nurses that will be sufficient to provide our patients with the care they deserve”, said another registered nurse, Serge Ganzburg.
In response to the IJB story, the Ontario Hospital Association pushed back against nursing ratios, saying that mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios limit the hospital’s flexibility to “tailor staffing levels” and represent “antiquated 20th century thinking at a time when Ontario’s hospitals are innovating to respond to the demands and complexities of the 21st century.”
Sunnybrook said they use “evidence-based tools which are designed to align the right number of human resources to patients across the hospital, depending on their care needs.”
Here is a look at the rally which took place outside of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on March 20, 2025.
- Ontario nurses protest over patient ratios in the wake of IJB investigation - 4 April 2025
- Behind the Reporting: Physician/Journalist Blair Bigham reflects on Ontario nursing investigation - 2 April 2025
- Ontario nurses raising alarm over high patient loads that put patients at risk, internal reports reveal - 27 February 2025
