Interior Health is looking at updating its contingency plan for shift vacancies at Oliver’s South Okanagan General Hospital after the hospital’s emergency room was forced to close for eight hours on July 17 and 18. Photo by Laurena Weninger - Click on picture for larger image

OSOYOOS TIMES-August 4, 2010

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

“Unexpected shift vacancies” were behind the eight-hour closure of the emergency department at Oliver’s South Okanagan General Hospital on July 17 and 18.
Mark Watt, Interior Health’s acute health services administrator for Osoyoos and Oliver, said the department was closed from 11 p.m. on July 17 to 7 a.m. on July 18.
The decision to shut down the department was made roughly an hour before the closure, he said, because there was no nurse coverage for the department due to an “extraordinary” number of people calling in sick for their shifts.
Watt said one nurse is required to run the department during nighttime operations but no nurses were available that night.
Although there were other nurses still working in the hospital at the time, he added, none were trained to work in the emergency department.
People who were in the department at the time of the closure were treated and released and anyone needing to stay longer at the hospital was admitted to hospital facilities outside the emergency department.
Anyone requiring a “higher level of care” was transported to Penticton Regional Hospital, Watt said.
During the course of the closure, he said, three people went to the Penticton hospital with “minor conditions” but there were no major emergencies.
Watt said signage was put up at the facility advising of the closure just prior to the department shutting down and hospital staff notified BC Ambulance crews, the RCMP and other local services of the closure beforehand.
This is the first time the department has closed down due to a lack of staff and the hospital is working to upgrade its contingency plans for staffing shortages, Watt said.
While the current plan allows for a certain number of shift vacancies for any given time period, Watt said that on July 17 there were three times the number of people calling in sick for shifts than the plan allows for.
To deal with the problem, he said, the hospital is going to cross-train other nurses working at the facility to work in the emergency department and to train other “relief and casual” staff for emergency department duties.
Watt added that the hospital has recently hired three new nurses for the hospital and they are currently undergoing orientation to work in the main part of the hospital outside the emergency department.
He said he wasn’t sure why so many people called in sick on July 17.
Rhonda Croft, the British Columbia Nurses Union’s Okanagan-Similkameen chairwoman, said part of the problem is nurses are working long hours and burning themselves out.
The night before the closure, she said, one nurse worked a 24-hour shift, something Croft believes is unsafe for the nurse and patients at the hospital.
While nurses are supposed to work 12-hour shifts, many are often working shifts between 14 and 16 hours long, Croft said.
She added that nurses at the hospital have said there are no casual staff to relieve them.
Roughly 15 nurses work at the hospital, Croft said, but in the summertime, it’s difficult to maintain healthy staffing levels, especially in small communities such as the Osoyoos-Oliver area.
Nurses have the right to vacation and call in sick like any other professional and the hospital may have to look at “creative ways” to handle staffing issues in the future, Croft said.
The union is willing to work with the hospital to deal with such concerns, she added.
Croft said there is a shortage of nurses “all over” and mentioned that a recent graduating class of nurses at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan was unable to find work within Interior Health’s coverage area and so many of the graduates are going to the U.S. to find work.
This current shortage is the “tip of the iceberg,” she added, saying that the average age for a nurse right now is 47 or 48 and a retirement boom is looming for the industry.
The closure at South Okanagan General Hospital came a week after the emergency department at Princeton General Hospital closed at 8 a.m. on July 9 for 24 hours because no doctors were available to staff the department during that time period.
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