Another attack at Waypoint: Action needed NOW
Leadership Table’s 23 recommendations: A start towards preventing workplace violence in health care On August 8, 2017, a patient at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care came out of the…
opseudiablogue
Grassroots activism is the key to worker health and safety
In October 2016, the OPSEU Mental Health Division hosted a two-day conference in Toronto on “Violence in health care and mental health facilities.” Bob DeMatteo, a renowned health and safety…
The TPP will hurt health care
Canada’s health care system will suffer deep and irreversible damage if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is ratified in its current form. The TPP is a free trade agreement negotiated…
Confronting the problem of violence against health workers
It’s a dangerous time to be working in health care. On any given day, health care workers are at risk of getting stabbed, choked, punched, bitten, spat on or verbally…
All health care workers matter
Nursing week is an annual opportunity to honour the dedication of nurses and acknowledge their contribution to the health care profession. But this year, the otherwise celebratory tone of the…
CBS CEO backpedals on paying Canadians for their plasma
The Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Blood Services is doing some damage control by backtracking on the agency’s position on plasma collection. In an internal blog post last week, Dr.…
An ounce of prevention: Fighting poverty improves health
Imagine two children, born on the same day, at the same hospital, to different parents. One family is rich, the other is poor. Experts say one of those kids will…
Bloodwatch.org calls out minister over for-profit paid-donor plasma clinics
A lobby group fighting to ban paid-donor blood clinics is accusing the federal government of misleading the public. Bloodwatch.org is taking on the Health Minister Jane Philpott, for allowing a…
Our hospitals are bleeding
It sounded like a good thing. Last month’s Ontario Budget included a $160 million increase for hospital budgets for 2016. It was the first increase in five years. Unfortunately, it’s…
The real trouble with home care
Home care in Ontario is in crisis, and everybody knows it. Patients know it. Home care workers know it. The Auditor General knows it. And now, the Government of Ontario…
Why are we risking Canada’s blood supply – again?
The tainted blood scandal was the worst public health disaster in Canadian history. In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 30,000 Canadians became infected with HIV and Hepatitis C. This…
“Care as a relationship” is key to good long-term care: research
What are long-term care residences around the world doing right? That’s the question an international research team travelled across North America and Europe to find out. Led by Pat Armstrong…
OPSEU fights back against Wynne’s hospital cuts
OPSEU is ratcheting up the campaign against the Wynne government’s relentless attacks on Ontario’s health care system. Here’s what’s happening across the province: This week, the Ontario Health Coalition is…
Home care: the debate the government wants to avoid
Ontario’s malfunctioning home and community care system is a prime example of why private sector companies should not deliver health care. They don’t do as good a job as the…
Where’s Linda Knight now?
When the unhappy staff at the Niagara branch of CarePartners first entertained the idea of organizing themselves into a union, CarePartners owner Linda Knight picked up the phone and called…
ONA Strike: Home Care critical to Ontario’s health care strategy – just tell that to the CCACs
About 3,000 professional staff at nine of the 14 Ontario Community Care Access Centres started walking a picket line Friday. Represented by the Ontario Nurses’ Association, it’s the latest labour…
Deep River faces Ontario’s plan for laboratory testing: pay more, get less
One of the last hospitals in Ontario to provide local outpatient medical laboratory testing is transferring the service to the private for-profit Lifelabs Medical Laboratory Services. The move will save…
Action: Lives of four busloads of Canadian youth at stake in Federal budget
The change in fortune for the federal government is making Jeff Moat very nervous. The CEO of Partners for Mental Health, Moat has been lobbying federal MPs to support a…
Heading for the courts, CAMH’s Zahn can’t sweep workplace safety under the rug
You have to wonder about Katherine Zahn. Not much has been going right lately for the CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Data shows incidents of…