By James Peters

IH says Kamloops hospital is well-equipped to handle influx of expectant mothers from Cariboo

Mar 6, 2019 | 10:42 AM

KAMLOOPS — Interior Health says it doesn’t anticipate any capacity challenges in the maternity ward at Royal Inland Hospital (RIH) in Kamloops, even though the hospital is set to receive an influx of new mothers coming from the Cariboo-Chilcotin region.

IH announced this month that it was temporarily shutting down obstetrical services at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake due to an unexpected shortage of specialized nurses.

The health authority predicts that will impact approximately 30 expectant mothers per month until the services are restored, which could be around the end of June.

Many of those mothers will have their babies at RIH in Kamloops, which already has a bustling maternity ward.

In a media teleconference Wednesday, IH North Vice-President of Clinical Operations Karen Bloemink said she believes the Kamloops hospital is well-equipped to handle the influx.

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“Right at this moment, we do expect to have the capacity at Royal Inland to sustain the transfers that are coming out of Williams Lake,” said Bloemink.

“We do not have existing staffing vacancies in that location, and we don’t expect to have any in the near future. The ones that we are aware of, we are well planning for, so we don’t expect that there will be a pressure.”

CFJC Today has learned of at least one instance last month when a Kamloops expectant mother whose newborn required admittance to the RIH neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) had to be transferred to Kelowna to have her baby.

She was told the RIH NICU was full and didn’t have room for her child.

Bloemink says that situation can take place at any time in any IH hospital, based on a busy period of time for childbirth.

“Any of our hospitals are at risk of that at any moment in the time, given what is happening in the building. We try to have contingencies for those situations,” said Bloemink.