Services have been reduced at Oyen's Big Country Hospital since Jan. 16, 2023. (Photo From Wikimedia Commons/Jonathan Koch, RPAP)

By Chris Brown

Nurse recruitment continues for Oyen hospital: AHS

Feb 10, 2023 | 3:20 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – One month after a significant reduction in services at Oyen’s Big Country Hospital was announced the town’s mayor says he thinks progress is being made.

“We’ve got a couple new nurses have come in and I think that once a new site manager is announced I think there’ll be a return of some of the nurses, not all of them, and then I think we’d be able to open,” says Doug Jones.

Due to a lack of nursing staff the hospital’s emergency department has been closed daily from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. since Jan. 16, and the 10 acute care beds in the facility were closed on the same day.

During a town hall meeting on Jan. 12, Alberta Health Services revealed the hospital had five part-time RN vacancies and one full-time LPN vacancy between those departments.

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Days before the closures AHS acknowledged past mistakes by management and said they are recruiting nurses and re-engaging with former staff to keep the closures in Oyen as short as possible.

In a statement to CHAT News on Friday, AHS says recruitment efforts include “provincial postings for RNs and LPNs with a focus on rural recruitment, meeting regularly with post-secondary institutions across the province to highlight rural nursing opportunities and a comprehensive recruitment campaign to attract and retain internationally-educated nurses.”

Jones says he expects an update from AHS on Monday and that a new site manager could be announced soon. AHS confirms they are in the process of hiring a permanent site manager.

He adds the community just wants to see the hospital service reductions end.

“We’ve been very, very fortunate that there hasn’t been too many incidences here where people have had to travel out where you know they can’t do it in the daytime. So yeah they just want to see it open as soon as they can.”

AHS says that since the closure on Jan. 16, EMS has responded to three calls between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. and two of those calls required transportation to another facility.

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