In the wake of an ongoing Labour Ministry investigation sparked by the violent assault of an emergency room nurse and security guard at Southlake Regional Health Centre, several new measures have been rolled out to help keep staff and patients safe, a hospital spokesperson confirmed today.
That Jan. 17, 2019 attack on a nurse and security guard in Southlake’s emergency department and adult inpatient mental health unit, and the ensuing provincial ministry probe, saw Southlake hit with 27 violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations.
Labour Ministry inspectors issued 27 orders to bring Southlake in compliance with the law, as well as 20 requirements to provide information or documentation.
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When the ministry first launched its investigation Jan. 17, it issued one requirement to Southlake to assess the risks of workplace violence that may arise from the nature of the workplace and to provide documentation, and one order to take every precaution reasonable to protect a worker.
That order and requirement have been complied with, a ministry spokesperson confirmed.
However, from Jan. 21 to May 23, 2019, inspectors conducted seven additional field visits.
“There was a total of 27 additional orders and 23 requirements issued,” Labour Ministry spokesperson Janet Deline said. “Out of the 27 orders issued, seven have been complied with. Out of the 23 requirements issued, 20 have been complied with.”
The ministry is not permitted to provide details of the orders and requirements made to Southlake as the investigation continues, Deline said.
An order is issued when there is a contravention of the Occupational Health and Safety Act or its regulations, and is the ministry’s enforcement tool.
Orders ensure the employer complies with the law and prosecution can result for non-compliance.
A requirement is issued when an inspector requires information from the employer, such as employment and training records.
The maximum penalties for a contravention of the health and safety act or its regulations could include for each conviction, if prosecution is successful:
- A fine of up to $100,000 for an individual person and/or up to 12 months imprisonment;
- A fine of up to $1.5 million for a corporation.
Southlake spokesperson Matt Haggerty said that since January 2019, several steps have been taken to make the hospital as safe as possible.
For example, the number of security guards in the mental health area of the emergency department has been increased to two, up from the previous one.
Hospital officials have also reduced the maximum number of patients in this area from six to five.
A second safety officer dedicated to workplace violence prevention has been brought aboard, and an improved transfer of patients protocol has been worked out with York Regional Police.
“Our efforts to prevent violence at the hospital are ongoing,” Haggerty said. “We continue to work with our internal and external partners, including the Ministry of Labour and the unions representing staff at the hospital, to close down the recognized gaps in our violence prevention program.”
Haggerty acknowledged that “it takes a period of time to implement some orders”, adding hospital officials “continue to work diligently” through each recommendation with staff.
Other actions taken by Southlake include: an exercise to test and evaluate three violence-risk assessment tools, including the tool it now uses, with feedback from frontline staff to determine best practices, a review of its staff violence intervention training programs, also with input from frontline staff, and a risk assessment of several areas of the hospital, including the emergency department and mental health unit.
And Southlake continues to prioritize areas for improvement based on a gap analysis of its workplace violence prevention program, Haggerty said.
“Violence of any kind is not tolerated and we take any incident seriously,” he said. “We encourage all staff to speak up, especially when they have safety concerns.”
Southlake’s emergency department is one of the busiest in the province. It was built to care for 70,000 patients per year and last year it served more than 113,000 patients.
York Regional Police charged a 21-year-old man from Toronto with assault and assault causing bodily harm in the Jan. 17, 2019 incident.
The Labour Ministry reports that in 2017, the top 10 health-and-safety violations in the health care and industrial sectors are as follows, along with the number of orders issued to employers:
- Workplace violence and harassment: 11,389
- Health and safety representative or joint health and safety committee: 5,428
- Administrative: 5,355
- Basic occupational health and safety awareness training: 4,704
- Lack of equipment, material and protective device maintenance: 3,649
- Lack of machine/equipment guarding: 3,562
- Improper material handling: 2,480
- Housekeeping/work surfaces: 2,384
- Other equipment: 2,228
- Lack of training: 1,806
