in the Canadian Medical Association Journal<\/a><\/span>, are not surprising to Peter Bergmanis, co-chair of the Ontario Health Coalition’s London chapter and a retired orderly attendant.<\/p>\nHe described the daily difficulties faced by ER workers in London today as a “circle of pain and agony.”<\/p>\n
“You can picture what it would feel like if you could never get a moment of rest,” he said. “You can’t feel like you’ve accomplished a full day’s work without having to cut corners.”<\/p>\n
“You get this sense of shell shock where you become numb to the plight of others, which is not an ideal scenario for a physician or healthcare worker.”<\/p>\n
Dr. Adam Dukelow, the integrated vice president of medical and academic affairs at St Joseph’s Health Care London and London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), said both hospitals in London are doing what they can to address the issue proactively.<\/p>\n
Dukelow sees the pressures facing ER workers, he said, from human resource shortages, lack of long-term care beds, and a growing, aging population in need of care.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, conditions are often less than ideal where there’s not enough space and not enough people to provide the care in the way that you’d like,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And that can cause moral injury on all types of healthcare providers.”<\/p>\n
In response, LHSC and St. Joseph’s have created the new role of physician wellbeing lead, responsible for ensuring resources are available for those staff experiencing burnout, he said, adding that they are also looking at ways to prevent burnout from occurring in the first place.<\/p>\n
“It’s a shared challenge that we’re approaching and it does make me optimistic that we will improve the situation we’re in, but I’m also realistic in that the demands of our healthcare system will continue to grow as our population ages.”<\/p>\n
Systemic change is also needed<\/strong><\/p>\nInitiatives in physician wellness are a part of the solution, according to Dr. Rebecca Hicks, president of the Ontario Medical Association.<\/p>\n
But higher-level changes are needed, too, she said.<\/p>\n
“What we really need is an ability to change how things are being inputted and how things are being outputted from the emergency department to make it a more sustainable place,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There are real systemic things that we could be doing to lower the temperature and make things simpler.”<\/p>\n
The issue is not that healthcare workers “can’t hack it,” she said. Rather, the system is “making it impossible for people to sustain their practice in this field.”<\/p>\n
“When the issue is a systemic one, there’s no amount of resiliency that will keep our workforce healthy and whole.”<\/p>\n
Focusing on physician wellness, more intentional scheduling, and ensuring access to resources and support will help in the interim.<\/p>\n
But at the same time there needs to be advocacy and collaboration with the government in order to create those systemic changes and make things more sustainable for the healthcare system.<\/p>\n
‘The chickens are coming home to roost’<\/strong><\/p>\nThe state of emergency rooms laid bare in the report is a “reflection of things that have been brewing for decades,” said Bergmanis.<\/p>\n
“It was just very evident that with all the restructuring that had taken place citywide, and all of the supports and financial resources that had been lost over the decades, that the chickens are coming home to roost,” he said.<\/p>\n
Bergmanis pointed to drastic reductions in available beds in London’s hospitals from the start of his career in the 1980s, understaffing, and the shuttering of healthcare facilities like the London Psychiatric Hospital as contributing factors.<\/p>\n
The starting point to address the burnout would be a proper bed capacity study, something that has not been done in decades, he said.<\/p>\n
“Until we finally get a handle on how many beds we really need, and start building and growing that, we won’t be able to do anything around our ER problem,” he said. “Because, frankly, we’ve cut so much.”<\/p>\n
Click here for the original article<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(July 30, 2026) By: Jack Sutton, CBC News A new report shows ER physicians are leaving the field or reducing hours to deal with stress A new report is revealing high levels of burnout affecting emergency rooms, with one in 10 emergency physicians leaving the field, and many more reducing their hours. The findings, part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ohc-in-the-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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