P.E.I.'s private and government-run long-term care homes have new measures meant to keep residents safe from the coronavirus (COVID-19 strain).
Jason Lee, CEO of P.E.I. Seniors Homes, said one of those measures is keeping staff from working at more than one home.
Nearly every care home in the province has some part-time staff with more than one job, said Lee, whose business runs several long-term care homes across the Island.
Since part-time care workers often have other jobs in the health-care field, Lee asked his employees to choose one job for the duration of the pandemic. It was a tough call to make but one that’s best for the health and safety of staff and residents, he said.
“We’re learning from other provinces what’s working, and it’s become quite clear … that this is a best practice, to limit staff to one home is proving to be one way to stop the spread of COVID-19 from one long-term care home to another,” said Lee.
P.E.I. Seniors Homes facilities are home to 268 residents and employ more than 300 workers. The provincial guidelines call for more than three hours of staff time per patient per day.
“Other provinces would not have that many hours per resident, so we’re very fortunate,” said Lee.
He has been working on the one-home policy, which affects 28 of his part-time employees, for the last couple of weeks.
“We did this with consultation with our union and their approval. It is an inconvenience for some staff,” he said.
“We did this with consultation with our union and their approval. It is an inconvenience for some staff. Those are real people, and we’ve had to ask them to make a choice which, in most cases, has the risk of impacting their income.”
- Jason Lee
“Those are real people, and we’ve had to ask them to make a choice which, in most cases, has the risk of impacting their income.”
Lee also hired 22 student nurses from the UPEI nursing program. P.E.I. Seniors Homes normally hires students every summer, but the pandemic caused Lee to move up his plans.
“This year we’ve hired those nurses earlier and we’ve hired more than we’ve ever hired before.”
Facilities managed by Health P.E.I. have so far not taken the same approach.
In an April 22 news briefing, Marion Dowling, P.E.I.’s chief of nursing, said efforts are in place to limit the movement of staff within different sections or “households” of the facilities.
“We have approximately 1,000 employees who work … across our Health P.E.I. long-term care facilities. Out of that 1,000 staff, we only have around 80 who work between two or more long-term care facilities,” said Dowling.
These employees work in all areas of the facilities.
Rather than ask them all to pick just one job, the province issued guidelines on April 21 that state if there is a COVID-19 case in a facility, “staff who are employed in more than one LTC (long-term care) facility should not move from a COVID-19 facility to a non-COVID-19 site.”
Dowling said Wednesday there is already a policy in place to prevent staff who worked with a COVID-19-positive patient at a different job returning to work at a long-term care home.
For now, Dowling said Health P.E.I. is focused on providing direct-care staff with personal protective equipment and stepped-up uniform policies.
Lee praised the provincial department of health, which he says has always provided support for his private homes and that has continued into the current pandemic.
“They’ve provided us with good insights to what type of policies we should be implementing during a pandemic," he said.
"This week, we even received an order of masks and gloves.”
