Photo From Wikimedia Commons/Jonathan Koch, RPAP

By Chris Brown

Oyen emergency department resumes full services

Apr 13, 2023 | 3:18 PM

OYEN, AB – Nearly three months after the hours of the emergency department were cut in half 24-hour service has resumed at Oyen’s Big Country Health Centre and half the acute care beds are reopening.

Alberta Health Services reduced the hours of the emergency department on January 16th and closed all 10 acute care beds due to a lack of nursing staff. At the time there were five part-time RN vacancies and one full-time LPN vacancy between those departments.

The decision was concerning to many in the town and prompted AHS to hold a community meeting to discuss the situation and what was being done to resume services.

Just before Easter AHS announced agency nurse coverage has been secured and they are continuing to recruit to fill vacant staff positions

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Oyen Mayor Doug Jones says residents are relieved the hospital is back up and running and feels secure about the foreseeable future.

“We’ve got enough staff lined up now for the next two months and we’ve got some new staff coming because we have contract nurses right now, OK, and they’re there for two months and we have other nurses that are willing to take up the pace after that,” Jones said Thursday.

“There’s a couple local ones that are you know going to come back and stuff like that and we have three new recruits from our area who have finished nursing and they will do their orientation here in the next you know take them about three weeks to go through the orientation then they’ll be on full staff with us.”

Jones adds they were lucky they had very few serious illnesses and incidents that required people to travel to other communities for care. The nearest health centre from Oyen is 113 kilometres away in Hanna.