For health care workers, the 'pandemic continues,' says hospital CEO

Health Sciences North in Sudbury, Ont., is close to the peak it reached in February for COVID-19 patients, said the hospital's president and CEO.

Dominic Giroux said the hospital has had 62 patients admitted due to COVID-19 in the last week. At the peak of the Omicron variant wave in February, the hospital had 76 COVID-19 patients.

"For many segments of society, there's a return to a sense of normalcy to before the pandemic. Students are back to school, staff are returning to work in person, people are no longer wearing masks and so forth," Giroux said.

"But for our teams, the pandemic continues. They haven't had a break in two and a half years and many colleagues are telling me pretty much every week, every day, that right now is the most challenging time in their career because there's accumulated fatigue."

With an increase in COVID-19 cases, Giroux said the hospital had record admission levels, with 598 patients in the last week.

In addition, 60 patients were admitted to Sudbury's Clarion Hotel, which the hospital has worked with to provide rooms for patients who don't require acute care.

"So if you add the two numbers, that's 658 admitted patients for a hospital built for 412" patients, Giroux said.

As with all hospitals in Canada, Giroux said Health Sciences North has staffing shortages on every unit.

"Over the last 12 months, we've recruited more than 800 employees, including more than 200 nurses," he said.

"But the reality is that there are unfilled positions and that means the number of overtime hours is on the rise and that's why I'm concerned with the well-being of our employees."

Due to that staffing shortage, he said the number of overtime hours at the hospital has more than doubled.

Giroux said some smaller regional hospitals have had to rely on private nursing agencies to fill those gaps. In some cases, he said private agencies, which are more expensive than hospital staff, provide 30 to 50 per cent of the nursing hours at some small hospitals. 

On Monday, representatives with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) were outside Health Sciences North to raise their concerns about Ontario's health care staffing shortages.

Dave Verch, first vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, CUPE, said they have seen a turnover rate of 14.9 per cent among their members.

"Unprecedented loss of health care workers, experienced health care workers, and we're just seeing so many more vacancies and the inability of hospitals to staff positions," he said.

Surgical waitlists

But despite challenges with staffing and more COVID-19 cases, Giroux said the hospital has managed to catch up on surgeries, which fell behind at the start of the pandemic.

"Right now we're at about 97 per cent of our pre-pandemic surgical volumes," he said.

"Provincially, right now, we're at about 85 per cent and in other northern Ontario hospitals were in the mid-'70s."

He said the hospital has reduced its surgical waitlist around 500 patients over the last few weeks.

LISTEN | Dominic Giroux of Health Sciences North talks about how the hospital is handling the latest COVID-19 wave.