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.
For-profit care homes have higher COVID-19 death rates among Winnipeg nursing homes
Manitobans died from COVID-19 outbreaks in for-profit personal care homes at a rate higher than in those run by the province or not-for-profit organizations, a CBC News analysis revealed.
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Data provided by the WRHA shows only two nursing homes were fitted with the new N95s on Sept. 29 a point when COVID-19 case counts had been steadily rising across the province and outbreaks had been declared at four personal care homes in Winnipeg.
By October, the fit-testing devices had been loaned to another 16 of Winnipeg s 38 nursing homes for testing staff.
A spokesperson for the WRHA said the authority originally created a schedule for the devices for September to December, but had to change it to prioritize homes as more outbreaks were declared.
Some homes have testing machines
Some personal care homes have their own fit-testing resources, including homes owned by Revera one of Canada s largest care home operators, and the company that manages Parkview Place and Maples Long Term Care Home, the sites of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Manitoba to date.