‘State-of-the-art’ OR in Altona left unused because of nurse shortage

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This article was published 06/10/2015 (3634 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A rural Manitoba surgeon says it’s scandalous “a state-of-the-art” operating room in Altona is not in use because of a shortage of nurses.

Dr. Gerald Clayden said no surgeries have been carried out at the Altona Community Memorial Health Centre, a 22-bed facility, since April.

Hospital administrators had promised to rectify the situation by September, Clayden said. But he said he was recently led to believe by a hospital administrator the operating room would remain closed until at least the end of the year.

“I think it’s scandalous,” said Clayden, who used to perform surgeries in Altona one day a week, driving about an hour from his base in Carman. “I’ve built up a huge waiting list of patients who are expecting to get their operations in Altona and who are still a long ways from achieving that goal.”

Clayden said when he raised the idea of hiring nurses from a private agency to fill in, it was shot down by administrators.

“It’s a state-of-the-art operating room, which probably would cost between $3 million and $4 million to set up if you started from scratch now,” he said.

Clayden said any delay in reinstating surgeries beyond the end of the year would jeopardize the facility’s future. A local family physician who performed anesthesia when Clayden operated there said he would need to upgrade his training if his skills are allowed to lapse. He’s not prepared to give up his thriving practice for a couple of months to do that.

Paulette Goossen, an official with Southern Health, the area’s regional health authority, said while the plan was to reopen the Altona OR this month, she couldn’t guarantee that will happen.

“We are actively recruiting nursing staff to support that service,” she said.

Goossen challenged the surgeon’s description of the OR as state-of-the-art, saying it is not brand-new, like other sites in the region. The hospital opened in 1994. Only about 150 surgeries a year were performed there, she said.

“It is more difficult in rural Manitoba, certainly in smaller communities, to attract nursing staff,” she said.

Goossen dismissed the idea of hiring private nurses to fill in so surgeries could be performed, saying it would be cost-prohibitive.

Such a move would also lead to problems with continuity of care, she added. “It’s more difficult to just bring people in who don’t know the facility.”

Clayden said the Altona OR was already vastly underused. His weekly surgical trips accounted for most of the operations done there, although dental surgery was performed there occasionally.

When Progressive Conservative MLA Cliff Graydon raised the matter in the legislature in May, Health Minister Sharon Blady assured him the situation would be rectified “by the fall or sooner.”

On Tuesday, Blady said there were challenges in filling nursing vacancies in the community.

“I know that they are working on it. I would like it to have been resolved long ago,” she said.

The province has found it challenging to maintain adequate staffing of doctors and nurses in many rural communities.

Blady said one answer may be to build “rural health teams,” rather than to focus on shortages of one type of professional or another.

“Maybe the model needs to change,” she said. “Maybe we need to see what it is that needs to be done differently so there is a stronger ability to recruit and retain folks.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca