Situation critical
NSHA to temporarily close some vacant in-patient beds at Glace Bay Hospital
SYDNEY — The bottleneck causing overcrowding at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital ER with admitted patients who can’t access hospital beds isn’t likely to improve any time soon, with word that nursing staff will be temporarily reassigned from vacant in-patient beds at the Glace Bay Hospital.
The Nova Scotia Health Authority will make the move early next month due to a lack of family doctors willing to provide coverage for in-patients in Glace Bay. The registered nurses and licensed practical nurses affected will be temporarily reassigned to in-patient medical units at the Cape Breton Regional
Hospital.
“Patient workload has been shifting in Glace Bay and the reassigned nursing staff will help with the current patient needs and the demand at the regional,” NSHA spokesperson Greg Boone said in an interview Wednesday. “A factor in the workload shift in Glace Bay is linked to the ongoing number of vacant in-patient beds we have at Glace Bay.”
Boone said the reassignment is temporary and “no in-patient beds at Glace Bay are being closed or lost here.
“Our intent is to have access to those beds when the other pieces are there to support that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Margaret Fraser, president of the Cape Breton Medical Staff Association, said that on Tuesday there were 30 patients admitted in the regional hospital’s emergency department, the most she has ever seen.
Fraser said the community hospital in-patient beds are crucial to the CBRH’s emergency department and their loss will do nothing to alleviate overcrowding.
“I’m very sorry to hear that they’ve given up on trying to solve the coverage for those beds because those beds are really critical for the continued operation and safe operation of the regional emergency department,” she said. “We haven’t had access to those beds for some time but temporarily closing them is a step backwards, in my mind.”
On Wednesday, there were 23 vacant acute care beds in Glace Bay. The number of beds associated with the temporary reassignment of nursing staff is 25 in units 3 East and 3 Southeast.
The total number of acute care beds at the Glace Bay Hospital is 44. No precise date has been set for the reassignment of the nurses and the actual number of people who will be reassigned is still being reviewed.
While she said it makes sense operationally to not have a nursing staff assigned to a unit that can’t fill in-patient beds, Fraser said more energy should be directed to solving the pay inequity among physicians that caused the issue in Glace Bay. She said the doctors involved have rightly balked at being paid less for the same work done by other physicians.
“It’s not going to do anything to solve the problem of emergency department overcrowding, the problem of overcrowding at the regional hospital where we’re having to find extra beds to put people in … it just helps out a little with the manpower shortage,” Fraser said.
Boone said doctor compensation is not an issue in which NSHA has direct involvement, noting that is a matter negotiated by Doctors Nova Scotia and the Department of Health and Wellness.
It also prevents the NSHA from admitting patients at the CBRH emergency department and then transferring them to in-patient beds in Glace Bay.
Not having access to those inpatient beds has a direct impact on patient flow in the system, Boone said. An entry point is often the CBRH emergency department and Boone said staff there does exemplary work providing care for patients who often have to spend two to three days in the ER while waiting for a bed to become available on an in-patient unit.
That bottleneck results in people with less-urgent needs often experiencing longer wait times.
NSHA officials have talked to nurses and union representatives about the reassignment, Boone said.
Dr. Gary Ernest, president-elect of Doctors Nova Scotia, in an interview noted family doctors are already busy with their own practices and are battling burnout and haven’t taken the prospect of withdrawing in-patient care lightly.
“They really have felt progressively unappreciated and felt that their work is under-valued with respect to delivering in-patient care in the community hospitals,” Ernest said. “They’ve put up with this for years … they see that other physicians who are providing similar care in other hospitals are paid more for this.”
In an email, Coleen Logan, a communications officer with the Nova Scotia Nurses Union, wrote that she didn’t have any knowledge of a pending unit closure at the Glace Bay Hospital. She did say that when there is a closure, nurses do not lose their jobs, but rather they would be reassigned to other areas or units at the Glace Bay Hospital or other hospitals in the area.