A nursing shortage has forced Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority to send newborn babies out of state for care, the nurses union says.
Debbie Forward, prexy of the Newfoundland and Labrador nurses union, aforementioned the situation at Eastern Health is troubling.
"Nurses don't want to see mom's and babies being sent out of the province for fear so they want their units staffed adequately so they can buoy provide concern," she said.
Forward said a shortage of neonatal nurses meant newborns had to be sent out of province trinity times over the summertime because of a combination of an increase in patients and staffing shortage.
Forward said the nurses wHO work on the neonatal unit at the Janeway Children's Hospital in St. John's own been told by their employer they must now work overtime shifts because the unit is not adequately staffed.
"Eastern Health has scheduled 14 mandatory overtime shifts at the [neonatal intensive forethought] unit for the side by side week alone. While employers are entitled to mandate overtime if no former nurse is available, programing it in advance as a solution to the nursing dearth is both inappropriate and unsustainable," Forward said.
"While the employer will argue they crataegus oxycantha cancel the scheduled shifts if they determine they are not required, these nurses are unfairly left hanging in the proportion until the very last minute."
The neonatal unit at the St. John's hospital has 25 intensive-care beds.
It's not the first clip the trades union has spoken out about nursing shortages in the province. In July, a government report showed Newfoundland and Labrador had more than 1,000 vacant positions for registered nurses as of April 1, a spot Forward described as a crisis.
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