(Photo: Zoom, Horizon Health network)
Horizon Health is continuing its search to fill hundreds of nursing jobs in New Brunswick.
The health authority has 227 permanent full-time positions, and 152 permanent part-time positions open across the province.
At a board meeting December 11, Horizon CEO Karen McGrath said the problems are not unique to any region, or any department of their hospitals.
“There is really no zone that doesn’t have significant issues. All of our large regional facilities have significant numbers of vacancies,” said McGrath. “Anywhere from 40 to 50 to 60 vacancies in terms of nursing.”
The staffing issues include specialized departments, including emergency rooms and intensive care units.
While Horizon’s staffing issues didn’t begin in 2020, they have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The majority of our staff are tired. We go through ebbs and flows, and I think they’re all looking significantly forward to the vaccine, and getting to a time when we can get back to fairly normal operations,” McGrath said.
Horizon was able to reduce the backlog of patients waiting for hip and knee replacements this summer, thanks in part to a lull in COVID-19 cases.
They also used operating rooms in smaller jurisdictions like Sackville to divert patients from higher-traffic regions, in order to increase capacity province-wide.
“We actually caught up a lot. We exceeded our surgical volumes for the same time last year,” McGrath said.
But the staffing shortages, in part due to the second wave of COVID-19 infections this fall, have delayed the health authority in further cutting through the backlog.
At one point in November, Horizon had more than 100 staff self-isolating while outbreaks were popping up in the Moncton, Saint John, and Fredericton health zones.
McGrath says fortunately, the health authority is mostly past the self-isolation issues, and there are now just 16 Horizon employees in self-isolation.
However, despite COVID-19 vaccines beginning to ship and a possible end to the public health emergency in sight, she doesn’t foresee Horizon’s staffing shortages being solved soon.
“The problem is going to be we’re not recruiting enough nurses to replace the nurses who are retiring,” said McGrath. “Because many of our nurses are at that age where they can retire.”
