Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre (rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Alessia Proietti

United Nurses of Alberta

Nurses report patient safety concerns daily at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre

Jan 11, 2023 | 11:18 AM

According to the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA), patient safety concerns are being identified and reported by nurses at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre (RDRHC) each day due to the continuing crisis of overcapacity and understaffing.

Members of UNA Local 2 say that central Alberta’s largest hospital has been operating well above its patient capacity every day throughout December and thus far in January. They also claim that the hospital’s Emergency Department has consistently been unable to meet its baseline staffing levels on most shifts.

On Saturday, January 7, they say patients coming to Emergency had to be diverted to other hospitals for more than 13 hours, with some being sent to Calgary, and causing an impact on other sites across the Alberta Health Services (AHS) Central Zone.

The UNA also states that wait times in Emergency over the weekend were reported as long as 18 hours, with one patient on Friday becoming critically ill in the waiting room, awaiting treatment.

“The hospital operates frequently in a state of overcapacity,” said Local President Sue Beatson. “We never seem to come out of it, or if we do, it is only for a very short time.”

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AHS said in a statement that their facilities, including the RDRHC, remain busy due to surging respiratory illnesses. However, they say they continue to provide care to those in need.

In addition to Emergency experiencing high numbers of patients, UNA officials claim the department was short multiple nurses during shifts.

They say the resulting exhaustion, frustration and inability to provide safe patient care is leading more senior nurses to quit or leave the profession.

AHS says they are dealing with similar staffing challenges as other jurisdictions and are working with the government to build their nursing workforce overall. One example includes last year’s signing of the new collective agreements for Registered Nurses with the UNA and Licensed Practical Nurses with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

They say RDRHC has also been working to resolve staffing challenges in the Emergency Department, including the hiring of new nursing staff.

“We are extremely grateful for the dedication shown by AHS nursing staff who are working extremely hard to continue to provide care. We are appreciative of the feedback from our employees as we consider all solutions to provide relief to our workforce and continue to deliver healthcare services to our patients,” AHS said in a statement.

Local 2 officials say the backlog in admissions is making it difficult to treat new patients as they arrive, with patients in unstable conditions having to wait for long periods of time in Emergency. They claim last weekend, up to 80 per cent of the patients in Emergency had already been admitted but lacked a safe bed elsewhere in the hospital.

“Our reality is crisis,” said UNA Local 2 Vice-President Margo Buss, who claims that patients in overcapacity on hospital units outside Emergency often stay in rooms without access to oxygen, call buttons, monitoring equipment, or washrooms. “These are not safe spaces.”

AHS says challenges with available bed spaces or capacity in hospital are not a new issue and that hospitals are able to accommodate patients over 100 per cent of normal capacity at peak times.

“No matter where a patient is seen at the hospital site, they will always receive the appropriate treatment,” they said.

UNA members say nursing staff are filing Profession Responsibility Concerns reports of patient safety issues in an attempt to get results. However, they believe AHS needs to take specific measures immediately to ease the crisis in Red Deer until long-term solutions are sought.

Some of their suggestions include:

• Acknowledging the crisis by returning base staffing requirements to the levels of two years ago, which UNA officials claim were cut when AHS implemented the Operational Best Practices program
• Ensuring two triage nurses are on duty in the daytime, as part of the basic staffing requirement, and a waiting-room duty nurse to ensure patient safety
• Ensuring there are addictions and mental health nurses on site as part of the basic staffing requirement
• Staffing and extended hours for the hospital’s minor treatment area
• Hiring additional and appropriately qualified “agency” nurses on a temporary basis to ease the day-to-day staffing crisis
• Pausing surgeries in Red Deer while the admissions crisis continues
• Discontinuing the use of overcapacity spaces as regular bed spaces, which UNA believes “normalizes the abnormal”
• Keeping a surgical unit, that is now closed on weekends, open 24/7

AHS says the RDRHC is using a range of measures to help manage patient demand, similar to those used in other hospitals across the province at peak times. They include discharging patients with appropriate home supports, managing surgery patients at home instead of in hospital as appropriate, and balancing admissions with other sites in the Zone.

They say one way they have been working to address capacity concerns is through transferring a patient who is medically stable but still requires further care to another healthcare facility. They state patients who are awaiting placement in continuing care may not necessarily require an acute care space and could be transferred out of the RDRHC to wait for placement in their location of choice.

“AHS is making improvements that are focused on our most urgent priority areas – improving EMS response times; decreasing emergency department wait times; reducing wait times for surgeries; and, developing long-term reforms through consultations with frontline workers. These steps are focused on reducing system pressures and improving patient outcomes,” AHS said in a release.