There are seven nursing and 13 Health Care Aide vacancies at the Dauphin Personal Care Home.
The number of beds functioning at the care home was reduced from 90 to 80 to keep the level of care to proper standards.
NDP leader Wab Kinew says not having enough nurses and spaces causes problems for residents.
"What we’re hearing from families is that there is a concern about the quality of care and the amount of time that is going to be spent with their relatives when they are in a home.”
Darlene Jackson, President of Manitoba Nurses Union says Dauphin isn’t the only place facing these problems.
“I don’t think this problem is individual to the Dauphin care home. There are other long-term care facilities, especially in the rural areas that have difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. I know of other facilities that have been through bed closures in the not too distant past who ensured that the residents there are getting safe quality patient care until they can hire, recruit, and retain staff."
Jackson calls it a vicious cycle because nurses have to work extra hours and get overworked and then they get very tired and ill. The union has been talking with the government advocating that patient care hours in long-term care facilities increase from 3.6 hours to 4.1 per resident.
Kinew says these shortages are causing problems for the people who are working at the facility and that we are just starting to see some of the impacts in Dauphin.
“The nurses’ union have been raising the concern about the impact on patient care. We’ve also been hearing from frontline nurses themselves that when they’re overworked, when the staffing situation hits a critical point that, that means the patient care can suffer. The nurses don’t feel good about it, the families don’t feel good about it, certainly, government should be acting to ensure that there’s enough nurses and healthcare aids to take care of older members of our community.”
Prairie Mountain health says they are “diligently working on recruitment into these vacant positions.”
