ALBERTON, P.E.I. — The administrator of Community Hospitals West is hopeful Western Hospital’s Emergency Department and Collaborative Emergency Centre (CEC) can make it through the rest of the summer without further closures.
“We certainly want to change the headline from ‘closures’ to ‘long-term stability of services,” said Paul Young. “I’m confident we will get there, but it will take some time.”
Last weekend the hospital dealt with its third emergency room closure and fourth CEC closure of the summer. The emergency department reopened at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
“Summertime is always when we feel the pressure the most,” Young said.
“On top of staffing challenges, that’s often where we have other folks who we’re trying to give some sort of reprieve, some vacation time,” he said.
He acknowledged some vacation time requests have had to be denied because of the challenges, while some nurses who were granted time off have agreed to help cover shifts that otherwise would have resulted in additional closures.
“It’s quite unknown, and not as appreciated as it could be, just how many closures are mitigated and managed just from the sheer commitment of staff who continue to come together whenever we have a last-minute sickness or call, trading off babysitters in some instances,” he said.
“We’re talking about rural health care, after all, and just that reality tends to lend itself to the possibility of closure.”
If it were not for, “just this unrelenting commitment from staff to do everything they possibly can to try to ensure we have access within the community,” Young said the number of closures could have been much higher.
While appreciative of all the sacrifices and the work that goes into filling shifts, Alberton mayor David Gordon said the current situation is concerning.
"It's a staffing situation; we know that, but it seems to be getting worse."
He said he'd like for the provincial health minister and the premier to visit West Prince to reassure residents the situation will be resolved.
"This is not just Alberton, this is all of West Prince," he said, noting Western Hospital has the only emergency department in the region.
The unavailability of a physician to cover certain shifts has resulted in ER closures and, since the CEC is a bridge model between ER shifts, the CEC cannot operate in isolation, he explained. An additional CEC closure occurred due to the temporary unavailability of a nurse to cover the shift.
“It only takes one sick call that we’re unable to fill that might result in a closure,” Young said.
Young said a vacancy in one of the two full-time sessional ER physician positions has placed additional pressure on ER coverage, as that vacancy alone impacts eight to 12 ER shifts per month.
“Every month we’re dependent on our existing physician group to pick up some of those shifts and then to go out of the area looking for locums (to fill remaining gaps)," said Young.
The ER model is built around two dedicated emergency physicians and three family physicians who would share the load.
Two new physicians joined the West Prince physician complement last month. Young said they will help fill some of the gaps once the scope of practice is expanded over the coming weeks.
One is a recent immigrant to Canada and the other is a new graduate.
“We will go from having two physicians covering the shifts to four physicians and, still, one ER physician-shy.”
There has also been success in attracting seven to eight new nurses who are expected to start arriving over the next several weeks.
“We need to be able to get to a point where we can stabilize our services, but do so in a way that doesn’t continue to put it on the backs of our staff and burn out our staff,” said Young.
He's mindful there’s no guarantee all current staff will stay.
”It’s important for their own professional development and growth that they explore those opportunities and it’s our responsibility to find ways we can fill their shoes behind them,” he said.
Yet, he said, nurses living in the area but working outside of the area, are showing prominent interest in migrating to work closer to home.
“For us, it’s a really positive sign that things are moving in the right direction at Western Hospital.”
