Nurses’ vote could put Thompson hospital on ‘grey list’

Nurses at Thompson General Hospital are voting on whether to “grey list” the facility because of persistent safety concerns.

A vote had been under consideration since someone fired a gun in the hospital on Christmas Eve, but a stabbing in the emergency waiting room in September “really brought it to the forefront for discussion,” a Manitoba Nurses Union spokesperson said Tuesday.

Grey listing is when a union warns its members an employer is failing to maintain professional standards and advises against taking new positions there. Voting closes Friday at 4 p.m.

A 20-year-old woman was arrested on Sept. 30 after another woman was stabbed in the hospital’s waiting room. The suspect was not a patient at the hospital but was there with a family member, RCMP said at the time.

A 33-year-old man — who was not a patient — was taken into custody for pointing and shooting a gun inside the hospital’s chapel on Dec. 24. RCMP seized the firearm and found a bullet hole and ammunition in the chapel.

Nurses and doctors called for security improvements at the facility, including the presence of institutional safety officers, after the Christmas Eve incident.

A spokesperson for the Northern Regional Health Authority said after the stabbing that it has security officers on site but no institutional safety officers.

Nurses at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre voted in August to grey list the facility because of safety concerns. The listing remained in place as of last week.

More to come.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

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