Mississauga and Brampton hospitals set to hire more nurses to deal with emergency patients

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Published September 21, 2022 at 1:00 pm

Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga

An increase in nursing staff should help get patients from ambulances into the care of Mississauga and Brampton hospitals faster.

A lack of sufficient staff was one of the reasons sighted for delays in ambulance response time, Peel Paramedics noted in a report. 

The offload delays, meaning it is taking longer for paramedics to drop patients at the hospital, are due to staff shortages. These delays are estimated to climb to 58,830 hours by the end of 2022 (22 per cent higher than 2021).

But a one-time $1,442,772 grant from the Ministry of Health to the Region of Peel should help boost staffing levels, according to a letter from Sylvia Jones, Ontario’s Minister of Health, presented to the Region of Peel council.

The funds are for the “Dedicated Offload Nurses Program”, which assists with patient offload at hospitals.

The program, created in 2008-2009, funds nursing staff dedicated to offloading patients in hospital emergency rooms.

“These program investments will help reduce ambulance offload time, increase ambulance availability, and improve access to emergency health care across your community,” Jones says in the letter.

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