By Jill Sperling

Shellbrook nursing shortage could put strain on P.A. health centres

Jan 7, 2016 | 4:09 PM

A nursing shortage in Shellbrook could challenge the efficiency of the entire Prince Albert Parkland Health Region. 

There are currently three temporary vacancies for full-time positions at the Shellbrook Integrated Health Centre, health region communications coordinator Doug Dahl said.

“That is around 25 per cent of the total (full-time positions) for that facility,” Dahl said. “So that is one of the challenges we’ve had in ensuring that we can have safe patient care.”

Dahl said the shortage made it too difficult to maintain the facility’s 20 acute care beds and they had to reduce the number to 15. 

With overcapacity issues at Prince Albert’s Victoria Hospital in recent months, a lack of beds in Shellbrook could create additional strain. 

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 “If someone is from Shellbrook or that area, once it is appropriate, we would move them out there,” Dahl said adding “We’re not able to do that as easily now because we’ve reduced the capacity in that facility by the five beds.”

According to Dahl, nursing shortages have been an issue in Prince Albert as well. 

“We also do struggle at times with filling some nursing vacancies within Prince Albert,” Dahl said explaining nurses weren’t keen taking temporary positions. 

“We know that people, especially if they’re looking to move to a community, having an end date to that position is not always as attractive as seeking something else elsewhere where it’s more permanent.”

Dahl said the health region has incentives for people to accept positions in rural areas. They are trying to find a way to adapt those same incentives to temporary positions. 

“We continue to try to recruit,” said Dahl, “We are reviewing some of our recruitment incentives on how we can do a better job, or make temporary positions a little bit more attractive.”

In the meantime, the health region will be utilizing agency supported nurses to fill the vacancies. 

“We’ve been using contracted nurses and we have a number of them coming over the next few weeks in Shellbrook, which should enable us to re-open the beds, those five beds, by the beginning of February,” said Dahl. 

The agency nurses should be there until the end of March. 

jsperling@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jnsperling