Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

DR. HELMCKEN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

After latest closure, Clearwater mayor presses Interior Health to help address nurse shortage

Jun 17, 2024 | 6:00 PM

CLEARWATER, BC — There is never a good time for staff shortages to cause a 25-hour shutdown of a community hospital, like the one that happened over the weekend in Clearwater.

“Of course, this was grad weekend in Clearwater, so that was a little concerning,” District of Clearwater mayor Merlin Blackwell explains.

The emergency department at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital shut down on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. and was not able to accept patients until 7:00 p.m. on Sunday night. One concern Blackwell has is how much notice the community was given before the closure.

“I talked to Interior Health earlier [Monday], and they’ve committed to responding earlier if they know there’s the likelihood of a closure coming,” Blackwell explains. “It was a shortage of nurses. There will continue to be a shortage of nurses if we continue to have these closures. Right now, Dr. Helmcken is being staffed with a partial crew of local nurses, but also agency and travel nurses when they’re available. We’ve sort of been doing that balancing act for about two years now.”

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This is the third time in a month that the ER at Dr. Helmcken Memorial has been shuttered. Health Minister Adrian Dix was asked about the closure during a media event on Monday morning and suggests that, at times, these kinds of closures are unavoidable.

“When you have an emergency room that is kept open by a small number of people overnight — because there are a relatively small number of cases — you are vulnerable to people occasionally calling in sick, which they have to do because they’re sick,” Dix says. “We work hard to respond to those all the time. We’re doing that not just in Clearwater, but everywhere else.”

Blackwell continues to work with Interior Health to make it easy for nurses to come to Clearwater for work and points out that there are some incentives in place for those who want to relocate to the North Thompson.

“There are some regulations and rules around where nurses can go inside of Interior Health. We’re trying to have those stripped down so those aren’t a barrier,” Blackwell says. “I do know some of the financial and training incentives are being put in place for Clearwater. If you want to come here as an RN or LPN and you want to get upgraded to the emergency department — ED status — that training will be paid for and will be done here for you.”