For healthcare workers, the ‘pandemic continues’, says hospital CEO

Health Sciences North in Sudbury, Ont., is close to February’s peak for COVID-19 patients, the hospital’s chief executive officer said.

Dominic Giroux said the hospital admitted 62 patients due to COVID-19 last week. At the height of the wave of Omicron variants in February, the hospital had 76 COVID-19 patients.

“For many segments of society, there is a return to a sense of pre-pandemic normalcy. Students are back in school, staff are back to work in person, people are no longer wearing masks, etc. “said Giroux.

“But for our teams, the pandemic continues. They haven’t had a break for two and a half years and many colleagues tell me pretty much every week, every day, that this is currently the most difficult period of their career because there is accumulated fatigue.”

With COVID-19 cases on the rise, Giroux said the hospital had record admission levels, with 598 patients last week.

In addition, 60 patients were admitted to the Clarion Hotel in Sudbury, with which the hospital has worked to provide rooms for patients who do not require acute care.

“So if you add the two numbers together, that’s 658 patients admitted for a hospital built for 412” patients, Giroux said.

As with all hospitals in Canada, Giroux said Health Sciences North was understaffed on every unit.

“Over the past 12 months, we have recruited over 800 staff, including over 200 nurses,” he said.

“But the reality is that there are vacancies and that means overtime is on the rise and that’s why I’m concerned about the well-being of our employees.”

Due to this staffing shortage, he said the number of overtime hours at the hospital had more than doubled.

Giroux said some smaller regional hospitals have had to rely on private nursing agencies to fill those gaps. In some cases, he said, private agencies, which cost more than hospital staff, provide 30 to 50 percent of nursing hours in some small hospitals.

On Monday, representatives of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) were outside Health Sciences North to raise concerns about health care worker shortages in Ontario.

Dave Verch, first vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, CUPE, said he has seen a turnover rate of 14.9 per cent among his members.

“Unprecedented loss of health care workers, experienced health care workers, and we’re seeing so many more vacancies and the inability of hospitals to fill positions,” he said.

Surgical waiting lists

But despite staffing challenges and more COVID-19 cases, Giroux said the hospital has managed to catch up on surgeries, which lagged early in the pandemic.

“Right now, we’re at about 97% of our pre-pandemic surgical volumes,” he said.

“Provincially right now we’re at about 85% and in other hospitals in northern Ontario it was in the mid-1970s.”

He said the hospital had reduced its surgical waiting list to around 500 patients in recent weeks.

LISTEN | Dominic Giroux of Health Sciences North explains how the hospital is handling the latest wave of COVID-19.