Code Orange: What Ontario's nursing shortage looks like in ICUs

Guest: Birgit Umaigba, an ICU/ER nurse based in Toronto

The ongoing wave of the Omicron variant is straining Ontario’s hospitals to a breaking point. At least two hospitals in the GTA do not enough nurses to take care of sick patients and recently declared a Code Orange, a rare move that means hard choices for health care workers about who gets care and who does not. The nursing shortage has been inching its way into hospitals across Canada for years, and now COVID-19-related burnout and nurses walking off the job are adding to it. Toronto-based ICU nurse Birgit Umaigba joins “This Matters” to give us a glimpse of the challenges inside the profession.