Royal Inland Hospital's emergency room (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

RIH STAFFING

Growing demand, sick leave have led to staffing, overcapacity issues at RIH: B.C. Health Minister

Jan 27, 2023 | 11:34 AM

KAMLOOPS — B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix is responding to the significant staff vacancies and overcrowding at Royal Inland Hospital, saying it’s been the worst hit hospital in the province.

Dix says between COVID-19, the overdose crisis, floods and fires, RIH has dealt with it all.

He notes more than any other hospital in B.C., the demand at Royal Inland has been up significantly during the pandemic. He recognizes the need to add more staff to keep up demand.

Dix says despite a 21 per cent vacancy rate at the hospital — with 300 nurses waiting to be hired — there are more people working at RIH than a year ago.

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“That’s progress and we have more to do because two things are clear about Royal Inland: one, there is very significant demand at the hospital, which continues, more so than in other hospitals. That’s something to consider and we have to respond to that,” he told CFJC Today. “We’ve had people come back that had left the ER and we’re obviously adding resources all the time. We have a dedicated staff team. We have resources in place. We have an action plan for Kamloops and we are making some progress, but we need to make more.”

Dix feels the NDP government has been successful in recruiting, adding 38,000 healthcare workers in the last five years, but acknowledges more needs to be done.

Dix says adding to the challenge has been more healthcare workers being off sick throughout the pandemic.

“COVID-19 and our change in our approach to that. You’ve heard me say, maybe 3,000 times, ‘you have to stay home when you’re sick.’ Well, that has an implication,” noted Dix. “In health care, typically before the pandemic we were at about 9,000 people working in health care — and we have hundreds of thousands people working in health care — a week who would be at some point be away for one day. That average this past year, really since Omicron — 15,000 to 16,000.”

Dix hopes to have more internationally-trained nurses in the healthcare system soon.