Nursing vacancy is at 28 per cent at Royal Inland Hospital (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

NURSING SHORTAGE

Nurse vacancy rate down, short staffing challenges continue at RIH

Jan 17, 2023 | 4:19 PM

KAMLOOPS — There are 460 vacancies at Royal Inland Hospital, 300 of which are nurses.

It makes for a 28 per cent vacancy rate among nurses — down from 33 per cent last spring at the height of the staffing crisis. However, day to day staffing levels in Kamloops continue to fluctuate, depending on the department.

“It’s definitely ongoing,” noted RIH interim executive director Gerry Desilets. “We’re certainly not where we need to be. There are still many vacancies. We’re still having a lot of pressures with occupancy and really that impacts our baseline staffing numbers. It is challenging. There are many days where our nurses are challenged, our support staff is challenged to provide the care they really want to provide to patients.”

The vacancy rate is further challenged by RIH being 117 per cent overcapacity, but does not encompass casual nurses that fill the staffing gaps.

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“It’s a percentage that doesn’t capture our casual nursing staff, it doesn’t capture the agency nurses that are working at our site,” noted Desilets. “Those are short-term solutions as far as agency nurses. That gives other nurses an opportunity to have normal workloads.”

While the 460 vacancies seem bleak — which it is and the hospital admits the ongoing challenges — Desilets says departments like the Intensive Care Unit and even the emergency department are almost fully staffed some days.

“We’ve also seen recently some of our areas that were more challenged — our emergency department, our ICU have days of 95 per cent staffing, which we haven’t seen in a very long time,” said Desilets.

The B.C. Nurses Union says the staffing levels may not be as “dire” as last spring, but short staffing remains.

“Significant use of travel nurses, agency nurses. People burning out. Choosing to go with perhaps less than the amount of work they would’ve done before or leaving the system entirely,” noted BCNU regional representative for the Thompson-Okanagan Scott Duvall. “People burning out, choosing to go with perhaps less than the amount of work they would’ve done before, or leaving the system entirely.”

The BCNU says the problem is beyond health authorities. The province needs to solve it. Duvall says changes to the healthcare delivery model may be necessary, as well as how nurses are educated.

“Perhaps the current model of the diploma, the LPN certificate or RN degree, and the way the education system is being offered, maybe we need to go back to an apprenticeship style model,” proposed Duvall.

Desilets says attracting more student nurses to stay at Royal Inland Hospital is the key for the future.

“That’s really the long-term solution is to have more students join our site, and as they’re working on the units, it is really trying to get them to join us,” he said. “We’re looking at different ways to bring nurses in and get those group of graduating nurses in March and April to come to our site.”

RIH currently has an overall vacancy rate of 21 per cent, while Kelowna General Hospital sits at 14 per cent.