Long-term care centre still short of staff for dozens of beds
New long-term care centre can't open remaining 30 beds until immigration process complete
Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority says it had to look internationally to hire licensed practical nurses to meet staffing demands at its new long-term care facility in St. John's.
Eastern Health's new facility on Newfoundland Drive has been open for almost two months, but still has 55 empty beds. That's largely because the authority cannot find staff to treat patients who would otherwise fill them.
Of the vacant beds, 25 will be filled when the Waterford Hospital moves some of its services to the new location.
Sonya Stanford, acting director of human resources client services with Eastern Health, says the remaining 30 beds cannot be filled yet because there are not enough LPNs to cover off shifts.
Stanford said staff have been hired for the permanent jobs, but the majority of the positions that needed to be filled were temporary full-time positions, and they had to look outside of the province to fill those jobs.
"We had to do some recruitment nationally, as well as internationally, because the local supply did not meet the demand, and it's also beyond the new long-term care facility," she said.
"We have other growth areas in acute care, in other places in long-term care, that also require particularly LPNs, so we had to recruit internationally, and we went to Jamaica to find people."
'Logical fit'
Stanford said the Jamaican government brokered an LPN program through the Centre for Nursing Studies a few years ago, so when there was a shortage of LPNs locally, it was a "logical fit" for Eastern Health to recruit there because they're trained in the Canadian health care system.
"We had been recruiting for some time to get some people, and we just did not have the interest. Of course, we compete with many different employers here — it's not just Eastern Health who are looking for LPNs, it's the private sector also who are recruiting."
Stanford said Eastern Health needed 20 LPNs, and hired 23 from Jamaica in July.
At present, 19 of those have been nominated through the province's nominee program and are now going through the process of obtaining visas.
However, Stanford said there is still no set date for when the LPN will be able to start work, because there's no specific time line for the immigration process to finish.