Pledge to restore Summerside hospital's ICU met with relief, but province urged to keep hiring

There's cautious optimism in Prince County after the P.E.I. government promised to reopen the intensive-care unit at the region's largest hospital this summer. 

The ICU at Summerside's Prince County Hospital has been operating as a scaled-back progressive-care unit for nearly two years due to lack of staffing. 

Thursday's provincial budget address, however, included an announcement that there will soon be enough doctors to restore critical care by August. 

"All in all, nice to hear. You want to maybe order the banner but not hang it up yet. Lots can happen in four months," Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher said on Friday. 

"Having critical-care services here available for people when they need them will make a huge difference in the lives of people who need it the most, when they need it the most. The impact is really immeasurable." 

WATCH | 'August would be awesome': Reaction to promise that PCH intensive care unit will return this summer:

'August would be awesome': Reaction to promise that PCH intensive care unit will return this summer

22 hours ago

Duration 2:37

The P.E.I. government has hired a sixth internal medicine doctor for Summerside, which it says will allow Health P.E.I. to reopen the intensive care unit at the Prince County Hospital this summer. The city's mayor, Dan Kutcher, is 'cautiously optimistic' but says a lot can change in four months. CBC's Tony Davis reports.

The eight-bed intensive-care unit at Prince County Hospital has been closed since May 2023 due to a lack of the kind of specialized medical staff needed to run it.

Since then, more serious intensive-care cases have been handled at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, 60 kilometres away.

PCH had been operating an eight-bed progressive-care unit until January 2024, when Health P.E.I. cut the number of beds to four because there weren't enough medical personnel to look after eight patients.

That decision spurred a town hall meeting in Summerside last year that saw hundreds of residents turn out to vent their concern and frustration to provincial health officials.

Now, Health P.E.I. said a sixth internal medicine physician has been hired, and that's what it will take to get the unit fully functional again.

Dr. Tyler McDonell, the hospital's medical director, said the announcement has staff "very optimistic," but the province's plan to reopen the unit in August will all depend on what staffing looks like at that time.

He said six internal medicine doctors is the "bare minimum" of what's needed to operate the ICU, so the province can't stop its recruitment efforts. 

"Ultimately, our unit will be back and fully open for business once we're ready to be fully back and open for business," MacDonald said. 

"August would be awesome, and we're certainly wanting to push for that." 

Can't have 'ebb and flow,' says nurses' union

There are also concerns about having enough nurses to work in the intensive-care unit. 

P.E.I. Nurses' Union president Barbara Brookins said there are currently 10 full-time nurses working in the progressive-care unit plus 14 travel nurses employed on short-term contracts. 

She said the province will have to hire more permanent nurses in order to keep the ICU open consistently. 

"We need to ensure that the staff are permanent, and we need to find ways to recruit into these areas so that people stay in these areas, making sure that this just doesn't ebb and flow and next month we have to close it again," Brookins said. 

"That's not the way we need to provide a service." 

Health P.E.I.'s CEO is confident that the unit will be up and running in the summer, however. 

Melanie Fraser said the progressive-care unit has been scaling up to provide intensive care in some situations. The agency is also looking to recruit more full-time nurses for the hospital to help stabilize that team, she said. 

The end goal, said Fraser, is to have both PCH and QEH with fully functioning intensive-care units so that the province's health-care system has a backup plan. 

"To me, it's incredibly important on a small rural island that we do have redundancy, that we have the opportunity for two locations to support each other should services be challenged in one area," she said, using the word "redundancy" in the sense of having a duplicate ready to prevent the breakdown of an entire system if something goes wrong.

"I have said repeatedly that it is my goal and my commitment to have two fully redundant hospitals on the Island."