Interior Health can’t rule out more emergency room closures at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake, but it is working on limiting them and mitigating the impact of them.
Karen Cooper, the Executive Director of Clinical Operations for the Carboo-South Cariboo, says they’ve had three so far this year but she says this one was shorter.
“We’ve had three. We had one on February 12th, April 29th and then just last night May 27th. I will add though due to the dedication of our day staff we were able to shorten that. The first two closures were for 12 hours. This last closure was down to 6 due to our staff being able to stay late on either end of that shift and really helped to shorten that shortage.”
Cooper says there continues to be a shortage of nurses across all jurisdictions in North America and around the world, and she says the shortage is worse when it comes to emergency room nurses.
“I just want to articulate that our nurses have additional training in order to work in the emergency department and so that resource is a precious commodity, so we’re certainly not isolated in facing shortfalls in ED nursing staffing, and it leaves us vulnerable in particular when we get an unexpected absence and are unable to fill the shift.”
Cooper does says however that they are making strides in attracting new nurses in other areas.
“Certainly the latest data shows that we’re trending in the right direction in all of our departments from a perspective of nursing, so we’ve been very fortunate to hire five new graduates and they started with us in April. However, the one department where we are seeing a trend in the other direction is in the emergency department, so that is where our priority focus is from a recruitment perspective, as well as the reach out to contracted nurses and nurses from other facilities to help us fill these staffing shortages in the short term until longer term strategies can come to fruition.”
Cooper notes that those longer term strategies include new financial incentives recently announced by the province to help rural and remote communities attract and retain staff.
In the meantime, Cooper wants to reassure people in Williams Lake that they will still be taken care of in the vent of an emergency and an emergency room closure.
“Absolutely. It is important to acknowledge our BC Emergency Health Services-BC Ambulance partners and how integral they are into receiving timely care in the case of an emergency. So absolutely, calling 9-1-1 is always appropriate and our wonderful partners at BCEHS, we work with them very closely so they know where patients are going at any given time, and work with them to ensure that an ED closure is mitigated and that timely access to those critical services is achieved.”
In this recent case that meant patients going to either 100 Mile House or Quesnel.
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