Royal Inland Hospital, Kamloops.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC - REPORTER / iNFOnews.ca)

Nurses at Royal Inland Hospital are coming forward anonymously to report a dangerous short staffing situation that occurred over the past weekend.

Nurses have been reporting low staffing levels and consequent burnout throughout the pandemic, but the recent shortage situation appears to be a new low, and the general shortage is continuing.

“It’s the worst it’s ever been,” said one nurse, who will not be named due to likely job repercussions. “One of our managers told us we should be closing the doors and diverting patients, it’s that bad.”

The nurse said over the weekend staffing levels hospital-wide were down to 42 per cent, putting staff and patients at risk. She said a walkout among nurses is being discussed, as well as a “correlated sick day” where many nurses will call in sick on the same day if staffing levels drop below 50 per cent again, regardless of repercussions in an effort to spark help, and change, from the government.

READ MORE: Mandatory vaccines for nurses making hospitals even more unsafe: union

“I was running all weekend trying to keep up, we all were,” the nurse said. “I had two ten-minute breaks in a 12 hour shift. I had to leave patients who needed to be cleaned up just so I could go eat something to keep going.”

The nurse said she and her coworkers were dealing with nurse-to-patient ratios of one to 12, with the emergency department as low as two staff working, when the standard baseline is 16. In these conditions, nurses can’t properly assess their patients.

“We can only do bare minimum nursing duties like giving medications and checking vital signs,” she said. “Home medications are getting missed. There is an unsafe delay in medication administration and delays in blood transfusions. We beg families to come in and help set up for meals, feed their loved ones when necessary, and help bath them.”

The nurse said multiple patients sit soiled for longer than they need to because they physically can’t get to them. Nurses are crying daily.

“The emotional stress on missing a change in status, a decline, with our patients is taking the biggest toll, and it is strictly unsafe,” the nurse said. “The fear of missing that change and having your patient deteriorate is real, and it’s happening. Nurses are not taking breaks, some are anxious and not sleeping properly, some dread returning to work.”

READ MORE: Nurse reports understaffing incident and continued burnout at Kamloops hospital

The nurse wants the government to step in and fix the staffing issues at Royal Inland Hospital. She said she is angry, along with many of her coworkers.

“We aren’t being heard and the upper management isn’t shining light on how bad our building is,” she said. “Our leadership is letting us down, they cared more about a mother goose laying eggs outside the window than fixing this critical situation. This hospital is consistently and always running in crisis management mode. We need the Interior Health Authority and the B.C. government to step up.”

The nurse said some of her coworkers are talking about leaving the nursing industry and going back to school because of the high stress levels.

“Every time we think we’ve hit rock bottom it actually gets worse,” she said.

A date and time for a walkout has not been confirmed. 

"Staffing challenges are being experienced across the health sector and at the Royal Inland Hospital," said the Interior Health Authority in an emailed statement to iNFOnews."We are actively recruiting to fill vacancies and increase staffing compliments throughout the Kamloops region and across Interior Health."

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