Over a year and a half after two Vancouver Island emergency rooms halted overnight service, they remain closed at night with no concrete reopening plan due to a shortage of nurses.
In January 2023, the province announced the emergency rooms at the Port Hardy Hospital and the Cormorant Island Health Centre, located in Alert Bay, would only be open during the day.
Resources would be pooled to keep the Port McNeill ER open 24/7 to serve the whole North Island.
“It’s actually very scary for people,” said Kelly Speck, elected councillor of the ‘Namgis First Nation.
Alert Bay, home of the ‘Namgis First Nation, is located on Cormorant Island, which sits just off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
Speck says if there are overnight emergencies, people have to be taken by boat to the Port McNeill Hospital.
But the boat that is contracted to take people to the hospital is located in Port McNeill, Speck says, causing an additional delay of about 30 to 45 minutes for the boat to get to Alert Bay.
This means adding at least an hour to an hour and a half of transportation to the hospital, said Speck. She noted there are times when the boat can’t run at all due to weather.
“That’s the fear that people have,” she said. “Is somebody… going to experience a need for more immediate intervention, and it’s going to get delayed?”
She says she has heard of family members driving loved ones across on the ferry themselves in medical emergencies despite not having any medical training.
“It’s a pretty complex and ultimately scary situation to be in.”
Nurse shortage
Max Jajszczok, executive director for community hospitals with Island Health, says the decision to close the ERs overnight was made to provide more consistent operating hours, as opposed to having sporadic closures.
He says the organization has implemented recruitment and retention strategies but is still struggling to get enough nurses.
“We are not at the point yet where we have enough nursing staff that are emergency room trained … to be able to consistently stay open 24/7,” he said.
“And we don’t have a definitive date of when that will be presented to the community.”
Jajszczok says the health authority has about 19 of the 30 ER-trained nurses that it requires to cover the three hospitals combined and is expecting another six to be ready by spring.
“It’s that other third of our nursing workforce … that is a little bit unstable,” he said.
Speck says one of the main challenges in recruiting staff is finding housing for them. She says the ‘Namgis Nation alone has over 100 people on a waiting list to get housing.
Port Hardy’s housing shortage has also affected its ability to retain nurses, says Mayor Pat Corbett-Labatt.
She says the health authority is trying creative ways to train ER nurses, where they can be trained in Port Hardy, but a provincewide nursing shortage makes it difficult to retain them.
Although the drive from Port Hardy to Port McNeill only takes about half an hour, Corbett-Labatt says driving conditions can be dangerous in the winter and cell service is limited.
“People aren’t happy. We are the largest community in the North Island and we would like our ER back open 24/7.”