Posted: May 01, 2021 6:00 AM CT | Last Updated: May 1
The St. Boniface Hospital emergency room has struggled with nurse vacancy rates since before the pandemic, this week vacancy rates jumped to nearly 30 per cent.(Walther Bernal/CBC)
A former emergency room nurse says chronic staffing shortages at Winnipeg hospitals have created an unsustainable workload for nurses, and caused many to leave the department — or leave the profession entirely.
"Our department is hemorrhaging staff," said Kristin Gebhardt, who until this week worked as a triage nurse at St. Boniface Hospital.
"It's our senior qualified nurses that we really need that are leaving, which causes huge holes and gaps in our schedules that we are filling."