The mayor of Clearwater is bracing for another tough couple of months following a pair of emergency room closures in the last three weeks brought about by a lack of nurses.

Merlin Blackwell says its because they are still about seven to eight nurses away from having a full complement of staff to work at the Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital.

“The nursing situation here has been together with medical tape and tenacity for quite a while, but now I think we’re to the point where there are enough gaps that we’re going to see more closures over the next couple of months,” Blackwell said.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Blackwell says he’s not sure if this year will be as bad as 2022, when there were dozens of – sometimes planned – emergency room closures because of a lack of staff. But he notes the situation appears to have reached a breaking point once again as fatigue creeps in.

“That was a reset. That was a ‘hey, we need to reorganize this and everybody needs a break from this.’ So, those overnight closures that we saw that were planned for 20 or 30 days in a row, that was what that was about,” Blackwell said.

“It was basically a refresh for everybody on staff to get a break from this feeling that you really could not take a day off.”

Blackwell says work to recruit new registered nurses and licensed practical nurses who can work in the Clearwater ER has been ongoing with limited success as nurses “are kind of hard to come by right now.

“No matter what we do, we’re competing against a lot of people,” Blackwell said. “In fact, I heard a couple of nurses from the Kamloops program going to Powell River because the incentives are there to work in Powell River whereas Clearwater is still too close to Kamloops to be considered for some of those incentives.”

“You can only Band-Aid and stopgap and agency nurse and whatever else you want to call those positions for so long before you run our of options, you run out of favours, and you run out of people to call.”