At least five BC communities had lockdowns this past weekend and the hospitals that remained open are critically understaffed.
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When BC’s health minister announced the opening of a new nine-story tower at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops on Monday, critics wondered if there will be enough health workers to care for him after several closures of emergency rooms in small communities of the province during the weekend.
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Emergency rooms in Clearwater, Port McNeill, Port Hardy, Oliver and Ashcroft temporarily closed between Friday and Sunday, forcing people to travel more than 100 kilometers to the next hospital.
In Clearwater, a community of 2,300, paramedics from the BC Emergency Health Service were not immediately informed that the emergency room at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital would be closing. As a result, they took a patient there before making the 120-kilometre journey to the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
In a statement, Interior Health apologized that when the emergency room closed in Clearwater over the weekend, “some notifications did not occur in a timely manner.”
During a press conference in Kamloops on Monday to mark the opening of the new Royal Inland Hospital tower and three new operating theaters set to open next year, Health Minister Adrian Dix shared his concern over persistent emergency room closures. and called the situation, particularly in Clearwater, a “significant problem.”
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The staffing shortage is largely due to health care staff calling in sick, Dix said, with between 15,000 and 17,000 people sick in any given week out of the roughly 126,000 public sector health workers.
The province and health authorities are working to hire and retain health care staff to address staffing challenges, Dix said.
“We are focusing on recruiting every day in these communities,” he said.
Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden said the recurring closure of the emergency room has many of the community’s 1,500 residents concerned that they won’t be able to access timely medical care in an emergency.
“People get scared because they think, ‘Well, what if I have a heart attack? What if I go into cardiac arrest? Roden asked. People have resorted to checking on Facebook to see if the emergency room will be open or if they have to drive an hour to Royal Inland Hospital, he said.
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A nurse who works at Royal Inland said the hospital is already operating at “terribly low and unsafe” staffing levels and staffing shortages at area hospitals exacerbate the problem.
Not only are patients diverted to the Royal Inland, but those who come to the Kamloops hospital for surgery or internal medicine cannot be discharged back to their home hospitals because the smaller hospitals do not have the staff to care for them, the nurse said. she who spoke to Postmedia News anonymously because she feared retaliation for speaking out.
Over the weekend, he said, the Royal Inland emergency department had just four nurses out of an expected baseline of 12 nurses. Her department was operating at 60 percent of basic staffing levels.
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Interior Health said that at the Royal Inland Hospital, 28 per cent of permanent clinical staff positions are vacant. The hospital has 283 full-time and part-time job openings for clinical positions that include registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and care assistants.
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The BC Nurses Union is pushing for a national human resources strategy to address crisis-level staffing shortages, President Aman Grewal said.
“When announcements are made about new facilities, physical facilities being created, that’s the first question we always ask: ‘Where are you going to get the staff for these places?’” Grewal asked.
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BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau criticized the government for presiding over ribbon-cutting ceremonies and holding the opening of a new tower at the Royal Inland Hospital without certainty of staffing.
“This government seems to like to focus on infrastructure, but has lost focus on the essential role of health professionals,” he said.
Furstenau said he has a “really deep concern and concern” about the closure of emergency rooms over the weekend.
“To be in a situation where so many communities right now (are facing lockdowns) … it’s a very distressing place for people,” Furstenau said. “These are ultimately potentially life-or-death situations.”
Peter Milobar, BC Liberal MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson, said that with a million British Columbians without a family doctor, many use emergency rooms as their default outpatient clinics because they have no other options.
“None of this is sustainable,” Milobar said. “We don’t feel the minister has applied adequate urgency to any of this.”
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