A Kamloops City Councillor says she was devastated after a meeting last week with nurses representing public health, long term care, and Royal Inland Hospital.
Citing reports of low staffing levels and stories from nurses under stress, Dale Bass, said more needs to be done to help healthcare workers at the Kamloops hospital.
“Nurses cried last week in this room. They just cried. Nurses are going home exhausted. More than half of them are on antidepressants right now. Some of them have suicidal thoughts,” she said during Tuesday’s council meeting.
“We can all go, ‘yay, its National Nursing Week’ and we can thank them, and I think we should but we don’t bang the pots and pans to make them feel good. It is not our responsibility, but they’re our responsibility.”
Bass also told her colleagues that she was given a document that indicated there could be over ten thousand hours in shift vacancies at RIH over a two month period from May 12 until July 12.
“In order to fill those, they’ve sent emails out to nurses to see if they’ll come in and cover at double and or triple pay,” Bass added.
“Those of you who follow twitter and follow Dr. Ian Mitchell would note that on Sunday night there were three nurses in the ER. The only way they got more was by pleading with their colleagues on facebook and many stayed late to help. That’s not really sustainable.”
Bass says she is not sure what else city council can do except keep complaining about the situation to both Interior Health and to Health Minister Adrian Dix.
“When we started talking last year about the problems that IHA has created at Royal Inland Hospital, I think we actually though we were being heard. But the irony of it being National Nursing Week this week, and this crap is going on,” she said.
“I know the mayor has tried to get through to the Health Minister, he at least acknowledged Royal Inland Hospital today, not just for a photo op. Yeah, I’m that cynical right now.”
Mayor Ken Christian too spoke about the issues at Royal Inland Hospital noting he was “taken aback by the candor” of the nurses after that meeting last week.
“We are literally six weeks away from opening an almost half a billion dollar hospital that will be nothing more than bricks and mortar if we don’t have the staff, including other allied health professionals, to operate it,” Christian said.
“We have been consistent in terms of telling the government that for a number of years now, and now we’re getting closer to the finish line, I’m getting increasingly more nervous about it.”
Christian also says he is appreciative of the nurses who have stayed in their roles to help patients, often at their own mental and physical well-being.
During Question Period of Tuesday, Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone said healthcare workers across the province were “crying out” for Health Minister Adrian Dix to acknowledge them.
“We heard yesterday about three ER nurses on one shift looking after 40 patients, with 40 more patients waiting at Royal Inland,” he said, asking the minister for specific actions that will be taken to address a “dire and worsening health care reality.”
Dix responded by saying that “no community in B.C., and no group of healthcare workers” has had to work under more difficult circumstances than those in Kamloops. It is not the first time he has made such a statement, as he blamed COVID-19, the toxic drug crisis and natural disasters as reasons for the issues at RIH.
“No group of health care workers – none in the entire province – deserves our gratitude more than the nurses and the health care workers in Kamloops,” Dix said, noting Interior Health has hired 200 nurses to work in Kamloops since January 2021 with more on the way. “This is a group of workers who should be celebrated for their courage, for their diligence, for their dedication.”
“We’ve added nursing places both for nurse practitioners and for nurses at Thompson Rivers University. We are adding staff and adding supports all the time, and we’re going to continue to do that,” Dix said.
