Mandated OT creates nurse shortage at hospitals: union

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This article was published 02/08/2019 (2547 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent exodus of urgent-care nurses at Victoria Hospital and generally high nursing vacancy rates at other facilities point to an “acute shortage” of nurses in Winnipeg hospitals, the president of the Manitoba Nurses Union says.

Darlene Jackson said 10 nurses have given notice they are leaving the urgent-care department at Victoria, mainly due to the continued stress caused by heavy workloads and mandated overtime shifts.

Most are taking positions outside of the hospital system, she said.

“They are taking jobs where they are not going to be mandated (to work overtime), where they actually have some control over their work life,” Jackson said.

She said she expects more nurses who work in hospital emergency rooms and urgent-care centres to make similar career choices if the staffing situation does not improve.

“Our chronic nursing shortage has now become an acute nursing shortage,” she said.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority disputes the union’s contention there is a nursing shortage.

Lori Lamont, the WRHA’s chief operating officer and vice-president of nursing and health professionals, acknowledged that 10 of Victoria Hospital’s 45 urgent-care nursing positions are vacant and that there are vacancies elsewhere.

In an interview, she described the nurse staffing situation at Victoria Hospital as “stable.”

The 10 nurses who gave their notice began doing so in May, Lamont said, with several nurses coming and going since then. The vacancy rate is as high as it is right now, she said, in part because of a decision to add three nurses to the hospital’s urgent-care staff due to increased demands for care.

Jackson blames the Pallister government’s hospital reorganization for a shortage of nurses. She said major changes were made at hospitals without ensuring adequate treatment capacity or sufficient staff.

Lamont agrees the changes have led to staffing disruptions, due to the heavy movement of staff within hospitals and from hospital to hospital.

Due to provisions in union collective agreements, there can be a “cascade” of vacancies created by a staffing change, but that doesn’t mean there is a shortage of nurses, she said.

Lamont said now that the major hospital reorganization changes have been made, administrators are working to “settle people into positions.”

“We have not been experiencing a nursing shortage,” she said.

Lamont said she “would be very concerned” if no one came forward when vacant positions were advertised, but that has not been the case.

She said nine of the 10 nurses who gave their notice at the Victoria urgent-care centre took other jobs in the health-care system while one moved out of province. Most of them went to jobs that offer “more Monday-to-Friday daytime hours,” she said. She noted that five of the nurses said they would be willing to pick up casual shifts at the hospital.

The nurses union has repeatedly raised concerns about high rates of nursing overtime at all city hospitals. St. Boniface Hospital’s emergency-department expansion has been delayed in part by a shortage of nurses, the institution has said. And a shortage of doctors and nurses was said to be behind the earlier-than-planned closures of the Seven Oaks Hospital and Concordia Hospital ERs, which have been repurposed as urgent-care centres.

Jackson said hospital nurses are complaining about an inability to seek advertised vacant positions at other institutions. They are finding that they aren’t being released from their current facilities due to staff shortages, she said.

Lamont acknowledged that some nurses who seek transfers have been asked to delay moves because of the potential effect on their current units.

The Winnipeg health region launched a national advertising campaign for critical-care and emergency-room nurses a few months ago, Lamont said. It can take six to 12 months to train nurses to work in these specialized areas, and the WRHA is looking for staff who can move immediately into these areas.

However, she said, the campaign has yet to produce any significant results.

Meanwhile, the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba reports there were 13,761 practising RNs in the province in 2018, down slightly from 13,912 in 2017. There were 12,708 practising RNs in 2009.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca