HUNDREDS OF NURSES NEEDED
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Northern Health is looking to fill more than 300 vacant nursing positions.
Last week, Northern Health’s recruiting website had 235 positions listed for registered nurses (RNs) and registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs), 56 postings for licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and 11 jobs open for nurse practitioners.
The job postings ranged from leadership positions such as two director of care positions based in Terrace and Smithers, to part-time and casual positions.
Of the 302 total nursing positions Northern Health is looking to fill, 66 were based in Prince George – 44 RNs and RPNs, 19 LPNs and three nurse practitioner positions.
“Spring time is always the busy time of year for recruitment,” Northern Health spokesperson Andrea Palmer said.
“We use the postings to attract new graduates.”
The number of postings isn’t unusual for this time of year, Palmer said, but Northern Health is constantly looking to fill positions throughout the region.
“There are positions that are difficult to fill,” Palmer said. “Often specialist nurses can be difficult to recruit.”
Northern Health needs more than a dozen intensive care unit nurses, emergency room nurses, operating nurses and critical care nurses, along with other assorted specialists.
The vacant nursing positions puts immense pressure on the current nurses working across the region to provide adequate levels of service, the president of the B.C. Nurses Union said.
“We know that the auditor general has already identified the north as having significant staffing issues,” Christine Sorensen said in an interview.
“That the north is already staffing about 25 per cent below what is needed. We also know that provincially we have the lowest rate per capita of nurses per patient population.”
Last year there was $162 million of overtime paid, which worked out to about 2 million hours of nursing care, which equals about 1,200 full time workers.
By 2030, there will be more than 25,000 nurses needed above the 55,000 that are already in place in BC, Sorensen noted.
“Then add on to that the significant understaffing in the north,” she said. “The north has struggled with recruitment and more importantly with retention of new nurses.”
The additional pressure of working through the current COVID-19 pandemic is extra hard, both professionally and personally, for nurses.
“Right now nurses are dealing with the overall stress of the healthcare system and the burden that is starting to come with dealing with a population that is extremely anxious because of loss of work, fear of the unknown around this disease and how long we’ll be in these public health measures,” Sorensen explained. “The nurses themselves carry these around with them because they too have spouses and family members who are facing unemployment, or facing illness and then they come to work.”
“And if people are seeing nurses crying, I’m not surprised,” she added. “This is a situation of high stress. Typically nurses will cry in the break room or in their cars or at home and yet they steel themselves to go back and do the job.”
It’s not just nurses working in emergency rooms and long-term care facilities feeling the strain. Nursing shortages are also in other health care areas, from mental health to addiction treatment.
“I commend those nurses who continue to go and work there and some of those nurses may also work in other places, such as acute care or long-term care and they see the pressures in those places or are being asked to work more in those facilities, leaving the treatment centres short staffed and when you have a limited number of nursing resources a health authority will move them around to where it’s the priority,” Sorensen noted.