Each May, ONA members celebrate Nursing Week, but this year, you're also doing something else: giving voice to the truth of your working conditions and the challenges you face everyday.
Nursing Week 2025 is held from May 12-18 in health-care facilities around the province. ONA’s theme this year is Raising our voices. Speaking the truth.
During Nursing Week, members, workplaces and communities can celebrate the dedication, expertise and achievements of nurses. Many grassroots members and leaders organize events and gather to honour and promote nursing professions.
But you also have more serious considerations in mind. You know how important it is to speak the brutal truth about the many challenges in our public health care.
While nurses are striving to provide the best care possible in a severe staffing crisis that has gone on for decades, our government continues to fail us. The strategies used by governments and employers to cope with the shortage are, at best, not good enough; at worst, they are damaging. Overworked staff, poor nurse-to-patient ratios and a drive to privatize health services will all lead to worse conditions rather than improvements.
Our theme perfectly captures the mood of our members, who are fed up with the impact of overwork.
Our theme this year is an opportunity not only to celebrate Nursing Week but also to talk about solutions – safe staffing, better pay and safe working conditions. Meaningful policy change, such as minimum nursing ratios, will help bring back nurses who have left and forge a better foundation for the future. Our theme perfectly captures the mood of our members, who are fed up with the impact of overwork on their professional lives and on their patients, residents and clients.
So how do you make Nursing Week a celebration when it seems like there’s not much to celebrate?
Local Coordinator Kelly Gagnon, a 37-year veteran of ONA, finds that her roughly 600 members at Queensway-Carleton Hospital (ONA84 in Region 2) look for something that can lift their spirits and make them feel happy about their chosen profession.
“Let’s face it, nursing is a challenge these days with understaffing and heavy workloads. We need a break and taking time out to do something nice for our nursing staff is really rewarding,” says Gagnon, who serves as a member of ONA’s provincial Nursing Week Advisory Team.
A lot of planning goes on behind the scenes to make Nursing Week a success both provincially and on a Local level.
Provincially, the advisory team is made up of five regional representatives and chaired by a Board of Directors member. Region 5 Vice-President Alan Warrington, who recently served as ONA’s Interim First Vice-President, is in his second term as chair of this advisory team. The team, supported by ONA staff, provides input on the theme, poster ideas and other materials that are reviewed by ONA Board members.
For Cathy Cleverdon, Bargaining Unit President for the Brant Community Health System, ONA7 in Region 4, Nursing Week is eagerly anticipated by her approximately 500 members, who find it a nice break from the grind of a regular workday.
“A lot of my members look forward to Nursing Week and the occasional gifts that come their way,” says Cleverdon, a 38-year member of ONA who became more involved with the union in 2019.
Cleverdon finds being on the advisory team an uplifting experience because they are planning for a positive event that makes her coworkers happy.
“We get to use our creative skills thinking up ideas for the theme and poster. It’s a positive experience versus focussing on workload and other challenges we face in our work. Plus, I enjoy interacting with other members on the team to find out what they are doing in their regions for Nursing Week.”
Other ONA members on the team are:
On a Local level, grassroots leaders and members busily plan Local and Bargaining Unit Nursing Week activities, such as rallies, lunch-and-learn events, gala dinners and a variety of treats delivered to nursing stations, such as flowers and discount cards.
And so, as much as there is a serious message behind our theme, we still pause to celebrate.
“Nursing Week offers the perfect opportunity to do more than celebrate. We can also amplify our concerns and our bold ideas for solutions,” says ONA Provincial President Erin Ariss, who makes onsite visits and attends Local events across the province during Nursing Week.
“By raising our voices at rallies, marches and other actions, we are speaking the truth to the public. We are highlighting the huge problems we are experiencing in our workplaces and providing solutions to end the staffing crisis and improve health care for our patients, residents and clients. It’s time to recommit to the fight for our profession and public health care. It’s time to speak out and call on the public to join our fight for safe staffing, safe work, better funding and high-quality public health care for all.”
Because when nurses unite to fight for better health care, we are unstoppable. And we lay the groundwork for our future.
Visit our Nursing Week webpage for our poster, shareables and other resources.
We want to share your Nursing Week activities, so be sure to post them to social media using the hashtag #NursingWeek and to tag ONA’s provincial account in your posts: @ontarionurses on Facebook and Twitter, and @Ontario.Nurses on Instagram.
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