WELLINGTON COUNTY – A shortage of nurses trained in pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum care within North Wellington Health Care’s (NWHC) network will force expectant mothers to seek care at alternative locations this summer.
All obstetrics services will be halted at NWHC’s two hospitals – Palmerston and District Hospital and Louise Marshall Hospital in Mount Forest – from June 6 to Sept. 1, with the potential for an extension to Sept. 6 after the Labour Day weekend.
However, paramedics will still route to the closest hospital emergency department depending on how critical a birthing situation is.
The reasoning for the shortage is twofold.
Already understaffed nursing rosters are reduced further with summer vacations, leaving shifts uncovered, and the hospitals are without nurses skilled in obstetrics care.
“We are dealing with challenges in recruiting nurses trained in obstetrics to fill vacancies, and providing opportunities for our new nurses to gain competencies in obstetrics care,” NWHC president and CEO Angela Stanley stated in a May 31 press release.
Stanley told the Advertiser by phone she isn’t immediately aware of how many nurses are currently skilled in obstetrics, or how many nursing positions NWHC is seeking to fill to rectify staff shortages.
But she said regardless of how many nurses are hired, upgraded training and education takes at least a year and-a-half before a level of competency and confidence is reached.
In the press release, NWHC chief nursing executive Kate Kobbes, said “birth volumes are very low” at the two hospitals, making it a “challenge for our nurses to feel comfortable and confident in their skills with the low frequency.”
Stanley said nurses need to be sent to other hospitals with higher birthing rates to get proper exposure and maintain skills.
“But it’s challenging, because the volumes, even after they’ve gone away for training, they don’t get the volume locally to keep those skills up, so we have to continually move them on to a different, higher-volume site and then bring them back, and when we have such a shortage of nurses just in general, we need them here to actually staff medicine and emergency departments,” Stanley explained.
Based on conversations with local primary care providers, Stanley believes the closure of obstetrical services at the hospital will affect “less than 10” patients who have expressed interest in giving birth within the NWHC network.
They are being advised to contact their primary care provider to determine a pregnancy care plan.
Most patients will be referred to Groves Memorial Community Hospital, Stanley said.
NWHC has also reached out to Countryside Midwifery Services and surrounding hospitals such as South Bruce Grey Health Centre in Walkerton and Listowel Memorial Hospital, to notify them of a potential increase in patient volume from this area.
A new recruitment campaign launched by NWHC could help to solve shortages, and a virtual job fair will be held in the future (date to be announced), following one held this past spring.
According to a list of job postings available at https://whca.bamboohr.com/jobs/, NWHC is seeking to hire nine registered nurses and five registered practical nurses, as well as multiple other positions ranging from physicians to dieticians.
The hospital group is also working with educational institutions to train staff and attract nursing students during the summer, with the goal of retaining them for the long term.
