Thunder Bay, Ont., hospital struggles to expand services despite having more nurses than pre-pandemic

A nursing shortage at Thunder Bay's regional hospital is keeping its transitional care unit from running at full capacity and limiting the expansion of operating room hours, says a top official at the northwestern Ontario facility.

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre faces the same staffing challenges as the rest of the province and Canada, said Adam Vinet, the hospital's executive vice-president of patient experience and chief nursing executive.

"When we're moving back to normal operations, or pre-COVID, to meet the clinical needs of our community while still managing the pandemic there are going to be some staffing challenges," he said. "What we're trying to do is meet the community needs and we're using more nursing as a hospital than we've ever done before as COVID has changed us.

"We do more immunization and vaccination clinics for COVID. We've had to increase our operating room capacity, surgical daycare capacity, recovery room capacity, and that takes increased amounts of nurses."

Vinet said the hospital has more nurses working than before the pandemic, with some returning on a casual basis to assist with vaccination clinics and the COVID-19 assessment centre.

The current nursing complement is about 1,450, though Vinet said it's hard to pinpoint an ideal target.

"The more nurses we can have, the better," Vinet said. 

"Right now, for example, we're only using 32 beds at the transitional care unit. Historically, we've had up to 64 beds there that we've been able to staff. These areas are opportunities. There are also patient needs we need to look at within our own walls. Can we get more staff — and we'd happily take more staff — to increase operating room times."

Vinet said hospital administration has processes to ensure patient care isn't affected by the nursing shortage.

"Internally on a day-to-day basis we work hand in hand with staff to find the best areas and use our staffing we have in the building and our beds available in the most efficient way possible."

To address the nursing shortage, the health sciences centre is involved in a regional task force looking at ways to recruit staff in northern Ontario, Vinet said, and is working with universities and colleges on ways to increase enrolment, as well exploring the possibility of an international nursing program.

Ontario Nurses Association president Vicki McKenna said she believes the Thunder Bay hospital is doing everything it can to address the vacancies, but faces the same challenges as many other parts of the province.

"I know the nurses, every day off they're being asked to come in for overtime. They're working beyond their scheduled shifts," she said.

"The nurses are burning out. They're really tired. It's been almost two years [since the pandemic began] and many have had little if any vacation time off. It's not about going on a big trip — it's just about respite really and some recovery time."