N.B. hospital staffing shortages prompts calls for more bonuses, recruitment efforts

The New Brunswick government is crediting retention bonuses for recruiting doctors and nurses.

Staffing shortages inside at least two New Brunswick hospitals have once again become a focus within the provincial legislature.

Green Party Leader David Coon says shortages with medical imaging technologist at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton and Upper River Valley Hospital in Waterville was the reason patients were “waiting so long for a PET scan, or a CT scan, or an MRI.”

“There is a crisis,” says Coon, calling for retention incentives to be introduced to address the shortages. “They’re not given the respect they should.”

Celina Bountalas, the Horizon Health Network’s regional director of medical imaging, says there are 12 full-time equivalency vacancies at Chalmers hospital in Fredericton, and three vacancies at the Upper River Valley hospital (along with two upcoming maternity leaves).

Bountalas says other Horizon sites within the Fredericton and Upper River Valley area (including Oromocto, Perth-Andover, Harvey, and Doaktown) are fully staffed.

Coon says staffing shortages are leading to the cancellation of summer vacations for other employees, who are trying to fill scheduling gaps.

“There’s a serious problem with recruitment and retention,” says Coon. “Nova Scotia basically has a built-in system where they’re always trying to pay more than we do, which is a problem. We need to keep up with that. It would make a difference if they got a retention bonus just like the stenographers and lab techs did in this last contract, and for some reason, they did not.”

Bountalas says there’s been no cancellation of summer vacations for employees, but rather a “modified summer schedule… consistent with prior years, to ensure continuity of service.”

Last week, Premier Susan Holt and Health Minister Dr. John Dornan said retention bonuses helped to reverse Horizon’s nurse turnover rate from more than five per cent on average to below one per cent last year.

There’s been no immediate comment from the provincial government on the addition of retention incentives for medical professions experiencing staffing shortages beyond nurses and physicians.

Jennifer Carey, manager of national advocacy with the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists, says New Brunswick has a lot to do in order to catch up with initiatives being offered elsewhere, especially Nova Scotia.

“I think we have to up our game,” says Carey. “We have to be able to say, ‘Look, we are experiencing huge vacancies,’ and we need to attack that with the same vigor, with the same sense of innovation, with the same passion, with which we have attacked shortages in the nursing profession, and in the physician profession.”

Carey says staffing shortages are largely responsible some patients waiting beyond the 60-day benchmark for receiving an exam.

“Sometimes patients are waiting 250 days, 300 days, sometimes over 300 days for their exam,” says Carey.

During Friday’s question period, Progressive Conservative MLA Bill Hogan continued his line of questioning about staffing shortages at the Upper River Valley hospital, and specifically a string of cancellations for obstetrical services in the building.

Hogan says two expectant mothers were directed from Waterville to Fredericton during one of the service cancellations last month, and had their babies before getting to the delivery room.

“One mother delivered her baby on the side of the highway,” says Hogan. “The other mother delivered her baby on the sidewalk, out in front of the emergency department of the DECH.”

In response to the question, Dornan says it’s a problem that has affected the hospital’s obstetrical services for close to a decade.

“This is not acceptable,” says Dornan. “We are working hard to develop sustainable solutions, not band-aid solutions, and to this end we have applied recruiters to this area to bring in more family doctors, but as well experts and specialists to provide obstetrical care.”

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