The operating rooms at Vancouver General Hospital are short the equivalent of 27 full-time nurses and that has caused surgeries to be delayed.
According to Vancouver Coastal Health, there are recruitment challenges for the positions which require almost a year of special training and mentoring under senior nurses.
The health authority says about 1,300 surgeries are scheduled each month and the nursing shortage has led to 18 procedures in May being postponed for at least a month at VGH.
“It’s no surprise that this operating room and many other operating rooms across the province are short of nurses,” said B.C. Nurses’ Union President Gayle Duteil.
Duteil blames the shortage on cuts to education and says province-wide the health care system is actually short about 1000 specialty nurses.
“At VGH we do the most complex surgeries, transplants, liver transplants, things of that nature so we have to orient and train above what a regular specialty nurse has,” said Anna Marie D’Angelo of Vancouver Coastal Health.
The health authority acknowledges there have been issues with bullying in the OR at VGH in the past but says steps have been taken to correct the problem including the establishment of a new respectful workplace policy.
Health Minister Terry Lake addressed reports of bullying in an interview with CTV News on Tuesday.
"When there are shortages, nurses step forward and do overtime shifts, extra shifts," he said.
"I think that adds to the pressure they feel, obviously. And it makes for, sometimes, a tense work environment."
Despite the added stress, Lake said he believes the hospital is "managing very well.
"I think they’ve had to reschedule about three per cent of their surgeries. So very small impact," he said.
For a brief period at the end of 2015, nurses working in the OR at VGH were being paid a $5-per-hour premium above their regular compensation.
That practice was not in-line with the Collective Bargaining Agreement and Coastal Health says other health authorities in the province complained leading to the extra incentives being cancelled.
In collective bargaining with the union, the province has promised to fund training for an additional 850 specialty nurses across BC.
But nurses may need some extra incentive to take the training – OR nurses are only paid an extra $50 per month to work in that high-stress environment.
