P.E.I. Nurses' Union raises concerns over private agency filling nursing shifts at PCH

The Prince Edward Island Nurses' Union is raising concerns about the cost to the province of using a private agency to cover nursing shifts at the Prince County Hospital in Summerside.

Union president Barbara Brookins told MLAs with the province's standing committee on health and social development Wednesday that the province began using the private company Carecor in February to provide nurses to fill shifts at the hospital.

"The most ironic part of that was that the company is obviously hiring registered nurses, but they actually hired Health PEI casual nurses," Brookins told the committee.

"So instead of paying a Health PEI casual nurse overtime, they are now paying Carecor $100 an hour to pay that nurse. So the cost to the employer — crazy."

Brookins said nurses working for the company have told the union they're paid $68 an hour.

She said the cost for the province to pay a casual nurse time-and-a-half to work overtime would be about $60 an hour.

"This makes no sense to me," replied Opposition health critic Michele Beaton, a member of the committee.

Beaton questioned why the shifts were sent to a private company to fill when those same nurses might have been willing to fill the shifts working for Health PEI if they were offered overtime wages.

"But yet we are favouring a private company and saying, 'We'll pay you to go do that job' instead of actually trying to release those positions.… I find that so disrespectful."

Hard to fill shifts

In a statement to CBC News, Health PEI confirmed that "agency or 'travel' nurses are being used to fill shifts and provide coverage for nursing shifts that we have not otherwise been able to fill."

In May, the agency said it had a 40 per cent vacancy rate for nursing positions in the emergency department at Prince County Hospital between June and September, with 160 shifts needing to be filled over that time frame.

At the time the agency said it was putting on hold a plan to use paramedics to cover some of those shifts.

Health PEI told CBC the measure had been "discussed and cleared" with the previous executive of the nurses' union "as a necessary measure to maintain services, while also providing capacity to allow more access to vacation for Health PEI nurses."

While nurses who work for Health PEI take time off to work for agencies as travel nurses, Health PEI said in this case the agency nurses it's using "are from outside P.E.I. or are non-Health PEI nurses."

Lack of nurses putting strain on system

Brookins told the committee that because of a lack of nurses across the province, some are being called on to work for 24 hours straight, when they finish a 12-hour shift and find there's no one coming in for the next shift to replace them.

She said in the medical unit at Prince County Hospital schedules have been reduced to "bare bones" staffing — from five RNs per shift down to two — with no backup plan if a nurse calls in sick.

She said as a result of the pressures put on them, the remaining nurses in the unit, "are leaving in droves as well and the retention for that unit, they've got a lot of vacancies."

Among the recommendations the union made to the committee: that the province increase the seats available in the nursing program at UPEI to train more nurses; that it create positions to turn casual nurses into permanent staff; and that the province introduce incentives for nurse retention until the workforce stabilizes.

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