After being closed for half a year, the West Coast General’s ICU is now partially open, with hope to become fully operational once new staff assume their roles at the hospital over the coming months.
On July 14 Health Minister Josie Osborne announced that the Port Alberni hospital’s Intensive Care Unit had permanently reopened one bed in mid May. The three-bed life support unit had been closed since Nov. 20 due to staffing shortages at West Coast General, with ICU patients being transported to other hospitals – in most cases Nanaimo Regional General – once they were stabilized.
“Important improvements in staffing and service capacity, including critical care-trained nurses, physician coverage, respiratory therapy and diagnostic services, mean that a phased reopening of ICU beds has begun,” wrote Osborne, who is also the area’s local MLA for Pacific Rim, in a social media post. “Since November, WCGH has welcomed new emergency and ICU nurses – including some from the US – and has expanded its team of internal medicine physicians, with additional health-care professionals arriving in the coming months.”
“Ten new nurses are now working at WCGH in the emergency department and ICU, with at least 10 additional nurses expected to begin working at the site through the summer and fall,” stated Island Health in an email to Ha-Shilth-Sa. “We have also added one full time and two part-time internal medicine physicians, who are supported by at least eight locums who regularly travel to work at WCGH.”
Late last year West Coast General’s staffing shortage gained widespread attention, when physicians at the hospital decided that the ICU could no longer operate without compromising other care at the facility.
At the time a joint statement from the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Tseshaht and Hupacasath First Nations called for “emergency measures” to keep the ICU open.
The issue brought another service disruption on Dec. 10, when admitting became limited to patients who have a family doctor who works in the hospital. Other patients were transported to be admitted elsewhere, until normal admitting services resumed Dec. 24.
The Port Alberni hospital plans to open its ICU back to the three-bed capacity in the coming months.
“Island Health remains focused on fully and permanently reopening remaining beds, one at a time, as they strategically rebuild staffing levels and a sustainable, stable service model,” said Osborne.
As of July 16 there were 52 jobs advertised for the Port Alberni hospital. Registered nurse positions are listed offering $41.42 – 59.52 an hour to work in the emergency department – the same rate that is currently advertised for RN jobs at hospitals in Victoria. There are no signing bonuses listed for nurses to sign up with the Port Alberni hospital, but the small city is part of the Provincial Rural Retention Incentives Initiative, which gives health care professionals an annual bonus of up to $8,000 to work in a community that is deemed in need of medical staff.
More nurses, doctors and other professionals will undoubtably be needed at the West Coast General in the coming years, as the hospital prepares to open a cancer clinic in 2028. As part of the Community Oncology Network, chemotherapy and other cancer treatment will be offered, with a designated space that incudes three patient chairs.
The West Coast General Hospital serves a vast region of nearly 36,000 residents, stretching from the Alberni Valley to Clayoquot Sound and Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Almost 20 per cent of this service area identifies as Indigenous.
