Workplace Health & Safety

Right to know

The right to know means that employers must inform nurses about hazards within their workplaces. Nurses should be trained to recognize hazards and informed about their rights under the law. Where hazards exist, employers must create safe work procedures, and train staff to ensure their health and safety is protected.

Right to participate

The right to participate means every nurse has the right to bring forward WSH concerns to the employer. They also have the right to participate in the WSH Committee as a member by allowing their name to stand for election/or selection to the WSH Committee.

Right to refuse unsafe work

Research shows that nurses are the most likely of all health care workers to be assaulted. In fact nurses often experience a greater degree of workplace violence than police officers and other protective service personnel.

Nurses have the right to refuse unsafe work.

There are sometimes cases where a potentially dangerous patient or a resident with a history of violence against nurses and other staff requires care. It is considered a breach of the WSH Act for the employer to ask the nurse to ignore this right and continue to care for the patient/resident.

Clearly it’s not the same situation that workers face in more industrial settings where engineered controls may be put in place to remove the hazards of a saw or a piece of machinery.

The human complication of the patient brings an added dynamic to nurses exercising their right to refuse unsafe work.

The issue of the patient/resident, as it relates to dangerous work situations, further emphasizes the importance of having a discussion with the supervisor to resolve/remove the threats and/or hazards in the workplace.

Remember, all staff must be trained in the right to refuse by the employer. In the WRHA for example, their policy clearly states that all staff must be trained in this procedure after hire, and entitled to further training on an “as needed basis”.

The key to resolving the right to refuse unsafe work situations is to be involved in real-time solutions and discussion with the goal of delivering safe patient care.

Right to not be discriminated against

The right to not be discriminated against is also entrenched within the WSH legislation.

This right offers protection to nurses, in their workplace, from discriminatory action by employers when they exercise their right to refuse, if they were to testify in a legal proceeding under the WSH Act, if they are providing information to the appropriate authority about workplace conditions, if they are performing their duties as a committee person under the act, complying with the act or regulation and/or attempting to have the act or regulation enforced.

Workplace Health & Safety Documents