Nova Scotia Health to close some surgery beds, redeploy nurses to areas with critical needs

Twenty-seven surgical beds at Halifax hospitals are being temporarily closed and about 30 nurses redeployed to help departments facing the greatest staffing pressures. The move comes into effect on Monday.

Dr. Todd Howlett, executive medical director of the provincial health authority's central zone, said the emergency department at the Halifax Infirmary, along with the cardiology and neurology departments within the QEII Health Sciences Centre, are facing intense pressure and need support.

"It's sort of two problems," Howlett said in an interview Tuesday. "One is some of our provincial services, we're not able to provide the care we normally can, and locally, our emergency department is not able to provide the care it needs for the patients we serve."

Staffing shortages are not unique to Halifax or even Nova Scotia. During the federal election campaign, all three major party leaders have promised to spend billions to help hire more people — evidence that the problem is national.

Howlett, who continues to work emergency department shifts, said things have become "extraordinarily challenging" with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating staff pressures.

'We're looking to do something differently'

In the central zone, emergency departments are seeing a 20 per cent increase in visits, meaning longer waits for patients and more complex cases for staff, said Howlett. At the same time, the vacancy rate for nurses across the province is also hovering around 20 per cent.

CBC News reported last month that things had become so challenging at the Halifax Infirmary's emergency department that two dozen nurses recently left without having another job in place.

Howlett said the temporary staffing change is an attempt to provide more support for people working in the units that are struggling, while providing some certainty for those being reassigned. Prior to this, nurses were being redeployed on a night-by-night basis and it wasn't enough, he said.

"We're looking to do something differently to support the care that we have to provide and to support our staff that need to be supported during these very challenging times," he said.

The hope, said Howlett, is that the temporary measures will last between six and eight weeks, until more staff can be hired and other support measures come into place.

In-patient surgeries to be affected

Meanwhile, it will have an effect on some people's surgeries.

Of the surgical beds being temporarily closed, 17 are at the Halifax Infirmary and 10 are at the Victoria General. Howlett said the focus would shift away from surgeries requiring in-patient stays, with surgical teams instead focusing on outpatient surgeries.

"There are no nurses sitting around doing nothing, so this will affect other parts of care," said Howlett.

The presidents of the two unions that represent nurses in this province say that while it might be frustrating for some patients, they support temporary bed closures if it gets their workers the support they need and the ability to get some time off.

"You can't expect nurses to bear the brunt of a system that needs a lot of work," said Nova Scotia Nurses' Union president Janet Hazelton.

"We need to make sure that staff get a break before we start trying to get at that [surgical] backlog."

'We need this to be successful'

Hazelton said she was hoping things would improve as nurses returned from temporary placements with vaccine clinics and COVID-19 testing sites, but so far that hasn't happened.

Jason MacLean, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, said it could be worth considering some type of financial incentive in an effort to entice more people to take shifts in the Halifax Infirmary emergency department.

"Everyone else is seeing what's going on in the emergency department and nobody wants any part of that because they simply can't handle the pressures that are there," he said.

MacLean also said it's important that any nurses being redeployed have the training they need to be ready to hit the ground running.

Howlett said they'll use a team-based approach that includes education and a buddy system. Generally, the more experienced staff will focus on the most acute needs. Still, Howlett has confidence in the workforce.

"Let's be clear: most of our nurses and others are actually quite well trained," he said. "But we will be carefully looking at that and supporting the nurses. We need this to be successful and our biggest resource, in many ways, is our people resource."