There is increased concern that a significant nursing shortage could have an impact on services at Boundary Trails Health Centre.
Reports last week suggested hospital administrators were eyeing the possibility of consolidating units and closing beds as a result of the staffing levels.
The challenges at Boundary Trails Health Centre are especially in the medical and surgical rehab units, where it was reported there were 43 per cent and 59 per cent vacancy rates, respectively.
“That is a significant vacancy rate. We are seeing vacancy rates in other facilities in the province that are similar to that, however Boundary Trails has a very important role in the joint replacement program in this province,” said Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson. “That is very worrying when we’re talking about limiting rehab beds in a facility that provides as many joint replacements as they do.
“That has not only impact in Morden and Winkler and in the Southern Health-Santé Sud region, it has a big impact across the entire province because many, many individuals go to Boundary Trails for joint replacement,” she continued. “Boundary Trails really serves as a hub, and it’s an important facility … that’s going to have far reaching repercussions throughout the entire province.”
A town hall was recently held that provided hospital staff with an opportunity to voice their concerns and contribute feedback around recruitment and retention efforts.
One longtime local nurse, who spoke to the Voice on the condition of anonymity, suggested things will get worse before they get better.
“Boundary Trails is like the Titanic. It’s sinking, and it’s sinking fast,” she said. “We need more staff. Where and how are we going to get them?
“I think it was a good step that they had that meeting. There are hard decisions to be made. Hopefully they listened to their nurses because they’re going to lose more if they don’t.”
The nurse spoke of the frustration that comes with so much extra being asked of and expected from staff.
“They’re tired of getting mandated [to work overtime], and a lot of the older nurses can’t do it anymore,” she said.
“You’ve got a high pool of nurses who are ready to retire or at retirement age already who are sticking around,” she said. “You’ve got a younger population of nurses who are burning out, and we’re not mentoring them properly, and they’re not getting properly trained.
“It’s just too busy to do the job you should be doing or you want to be doing,” the nurse continued.
“There’s so many vacancies, and there’s also no nurses to fill them,” she said, adding nurses can look elsewhere for work with better pay, benefits, and work conditions.
“Management is trying to somewhat manage the staff and help them out, but there’s just not enough people,” she continued. “I think the nurses are feeling very defeated, and management’s probably feeling defeated too.”
There was a lot of focus at the town hall on wages and benefits, but she doesn’t see that as really necessarily being at the core of the problem.
“There’s so many layers to this that people don’t know,” she suggested. “There’s also that mentality of only fighting for your own department. Everyone needs to come together and realize if we want Boundary Trails to continue, everyone needs to work together.”
She said it is going to require some very strategic thinking and some new solutions such as other extra incentives, but again stressed that it needs to be a coordinated, united effort.
“There’s ways around it if management was willing. They need to make concessions, and they need to show their staff that they do support them,” she said. “And bring some positivity to the team … in a very bleak position, it’s hard to be optimistic.”
Jackson noted the Canadian Nurses Association issued a warning 25 years ago about an impending nursing shortage that it estimated would reach a peak in 2025.
“We’ve progressively been reaching that point … COVID really accelerated it. We are in 2023 where we would have been in 2025 with this shortage,” she said.
She suggested a number of factors are coming into play that are worsening the shortages.
“We’re seeing more and more nurses who are leaving facilities or leaving the profession,” she said. “We have a lot of nurses who are either at retirement age and still working or on the cusp of retirement. We’re also losing many nurses out of our public health care system to the private for-profit agencies … it has a huge impact on our public health care system.
“We are finding there are many, many nurses who are just saying, ‘I cannot maintain this, I cannot maintain the workloads and the hours I am working’ … and are leaving the profession, so it’s just the perfect storm.
“Nurses are so frustrated … they have a life outside that facility, but with the amount of overtime that has been worked … they have no work-life balance,” Jackson said, noting some are going to casual positions as a result. “It’s a shame we are losing nurses … in order to have a work-life balance … it’s just not a good scenario.”
Jackson also agreed the loss of staff may have been exacerbated in this region during the pandemic by the anti-vaccine and anti-public health orders movement and the verbal abuse and harassment directed at many health care staff as a result.
She suggested it’s clear what the focus needs to be to address the staffing issues in the immediate short term.
“They need to be doing retention. They need to retain every possible nurse in the system, and that is going to take collaboration with the government,” she said. “They need to keep nurses in those facilities to keep us afloat until we can bolster our ranks with new grads coming out.”
She applauds the province for adding training spots, but that is only a longer term solution.
“Just do everything you can now to keep everyone in the system.”
When contacted last week for comment, Southern Health-Santé Sud released the following statement that it “would like to voice its appreciation for nursing staff at Boundary Trails Health Centre who continue to work hard to support patient care during challenging circumstances that are largely attributable to retirements and planned leaves.
“We offer sincere thanks to nurses at Boundary Trails—and physicians, allied health and support staff—for their ongoing dedication to providing care for residents living in or near the community.
“A multi-pronged approach to stabilizing staffing across the region, including this site, has been underway. This approach includes various recruitment initiatives aimed at filling existing vacancies including career fairs and targeting recent and upcoming nursing grads.”
