The Special care nursery and paediatric unit at Guelph General Hospital are being merged. This merger will compromise the safety and quality patient care for infants, children and adults. Due to the specialized knowledge and skills needed to meet the complex needs of their patients the hospital needs more Special care nurses. The merging of the two units will not address the chronic staffing shortage in the Special Care Nursery.

The Special Care Nursery provides specialized care to newborns that are born with complications that need continuous monitoring. If these newborns don't get care from the properly trained staff on duty these babies will die or suffer from a medical emergency. Under the care of a trained nurse the subtle signs are caught before a tragedy can occur.

Moving between the two seperate units to provide care will leave the other area with insufficient staff as one nurse will be left working alone.

A stable level of specialized staffing on both units is required because a patient’s health status can change suddenly. A subtle sign can be missed due to insufficient staffing, and trigger a medical emergency. Care coming too late could potentially  lead to a tragedy. 

The highly skilled, experienced professionals that care for the patients in these units deserve fairness and respect.

We the undersigned, request that CEO Marianne Walker and Kathy Wilkie Chair of the board of Directors put a stop to this merger and instead look into properly staffing and training staff the Special Care Nursery safely and according to the appropriate ministry standards.