Manitoba hospital strained by 52% nurse vacancy rate

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This article was published 22/02/2024 (595 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE critical nursing shortage that has plagued a southern Manitoba hospital for years has become so dire it’s forcing administrators to consider consolidating units and closing some beds, internal documents obtained by the Free Press show.

In-patient and emergency nursing vacancies at Boundary Trails Health Centre, located between the expanding communities of Winkler and Morden, have climbed to 52 per cent, a Feb. 1 memo stated.

“Patient care is unsafe and nursing licences are at risk,” a hospital source said Thursday, before senior leaders and staff attended a virtual town hall meeting. “For years, this has been their solution: simply putting a small Band-Aid over a gaping wound.”

Nurses are frustrated and exhausted after being forced to cover vacancies in other units or work mandatory overtime at the Southern Health facility, which is being expanded.

Some nurses have quit or switched to casual work, after feeling like they were not supported by management, the source said.

Southern Health did not provide a comment by deadline Wednesday.

Vacancies at Boundary Trails, one of rural Manitoba’s biggest regional hospitals, have reached a “critical level,” the memo to staff says.

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson described the vacancy rate as “appalling.”

“You cannot maintain or sustain a unit and provide care with those vacancy rates,” she said.

She blamed “an incredible lack of foresight and planning” by governments and the employer for the vacancies.

Minutes from a Feb. 15 meeting show Boundary Trails is looking at combining the medical and rehabilitation/surgical units to be able to cover all shifts and reduce overtime.

Staff would work together as one team in the medical unit space, likely for some time.

“With the level of vacancies on both units, it does not seem likely that we can continue with current operations as is,” the document said.

It said hospital leadership decided against closing beds on the medical ward because consolidating units could give a better nursing/patient ratio and allow for better management of staff resources.

The possibility of some bed closures was discussed during Wednesday evening’s town hall, another source said.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said it is their understanding no beds are going to close. Asagwara said provincial staff are in regular contact with Southern Health about the staffing situation.

“Patient safety is the absolute top priority,” the minister told the Free Press.

Boundary Trails staff were told 9.25 out of 15.6 full-time equivalent positions, or 59 per cent, in the rehab/surgical unit are unfilled, with another position to become vacant in a few weeks.

The unit needs 15 nurses to get up to baseline staffing.

In the medical unit, 10.3 out of 23.8 FTE positions, or 43 per cent, are vacant, the document said.

“Based on our current vacancy levels, it is not sustainable to continue as we are,” the minutes stated.

Staff have been pulled from other units to plug some of the gaps.

A merger between the medical and rehab/surgical units would likely trigger a domino effect of measures in a bid to cope with demand.

According to the document, overcapacity protocols would be revisited, work would be done to mitigate ER congestion, same-day surgeries would increase and some patients would be moved to facilities in Morris, Altona and Portage la Prairie.

The hospital would look at moving long-term care patients to other sites as much as possible.

No patients would be admitted to rehab/surgical if it is combined with the medical unit, the document said.

It said eight surgical beds would be located on a different unit to accommodate any surgical patients who need to be admitted.

Administrators assured staff they are trying to fill vacancies. The document said the hospital is trying to recruit from a provincial float pool, and looking at hiring agency nurses and asking staff at other facilities to be temporarily reassigned.

It said nursing graduates do not have a large impact on vacancy numbers.

After winning October’s provincial election, the NDP government set a goal of hiring 300 more nurses for sites across Manitoba.

Nurses at Boundary Trails are doing everything they can to provide care, including “hours and hours” of overtime, but the shortage is taking its toll, said Jackson.

“You become exhausted,” she said. “Staff morale, I can imagine, in that facility is very low.”

Hospitals across Manitoba are grappling with staff shortages that have been building for years. Jackson said there are similar vacancy rates in Northern Health Region.

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She said Manitoba’s government and health authorities must make every effort to retain every nurse in the system.

A change in culture is needed to help accomplish that, Jackson added.

Asagwara said the NDP is committed to improving workplace culture within health care and making decisions based on employee feedback to help retain workers.

Since winning a majority, the health minister and Premier Wab Kinew have met with employees at some facilities as part of what the government has dubbed a listening tour.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.