Push, Push, Wait, Wait, Hold, Hold. Travel, Travel?

Expectant parents are adding a discussion or two with their doctors to their to do list this week, as Prince Rupert Regional Hospital works around some staffing issues with its maternity ward.

With only two of the normal complement of five maternity nurses on staff available for work, Northern Health officials are suggesting that parents will want to discuss delivery options with their doctors.

Sue Beckermann was quoted in the Daily News on Friday that with the nursing shortage, expectant parents concerned about the staffing situation, may want to look to another community with certified maternity help on site and available for when delivery day comes around.

“It’s a very personal decision. If people are nervous that they could deliver on a day when we do not have a certified nurse available, they may want to go somewhere where they know that’s available,” she said.

Needless to say, it's probably a dis-concerting issue for parents to be to have to think about at a most stressful time. The need to uproot and go out of town to deliver their child.

It's not the first time that the issue of staffing of the maternity ward has come up locally, so it would seem that it's a situtation that Northern Health has been unable to resolve.

It makes for yet another addition to the questions about health delivery services in the Northwest, questions that keep coming up time and time again with little in the way of progress seemingly on the way.

The Daily News had full details on the maternity ward situation in Friday's paper.

Maternity ward working around shortage of nurses
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Friday, April 20, 2007

Expectant moms are being asked to talk about delivery options with their doctors because the hospital now has less than half the number of dedicated maternity nurses it needs.

Sue Beckermann, Northwest Health Service Administrator, confirmed the hospital only has two dedicated maternity nurses at the moment.

Prince Rupert Regional Hospital is supposed to have five dedicated maternity nurses. It had three until recently, then one had to leave because she is now a new mom herself.

While there are other nurses within the community with maternity training who have offered to fill in, there could be times when a maternity nurse is not available, said Beckermann.

“We are challenged. We probably will see occasional times when we have difficulty covering,” she said. “The important thing to remember is the doors are always open. There are always nurses here. They may not be maternity trained but the physician will be here as well and we would never turn anybody away.”

She said expectant moms should talk with their physician about their options.

“It’s a very personal decision. If people are nervous that they could deliver on a day when we do not have a certified nurse available, they may want to go somewhere where they know that’s available,” she said.

“That would be between that person and their doctor and in the meantime we are recruiting as hard as we can.”

Beckermann explained one challenge in recruiting maternity nurses is that Prince Rupert Regional Hospital only sees about 200 to 210 births a year.

“That makes it a little difficult to entice a maternity nurse to come,” she said. “The number’s low, that’s not even one birth a day per year. It’s not a lot of hands-on work, not a lot of consistency and our moms always tend to come in little groups rather than one at a time.”

This means Beckermann needs to find someone who wants to do maternity but not on a full-time, day-in day-out basis — someone who is willing to turn their hand to doing other things in nursing when there isn’t maternity available.

“There’s so many choices today for nurses that it’s very hard to persuade somebody to come to that role,” she said.

In addition, Northern Health is also encouraging nursing staff at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital to go for maternity training and supporting the cost of any specialty certification in maternity.

“Any of our staff that have an interest we have been sending off for courses and supporting them in getting that specialty certification,” she said.

In the meantime, she noted they have had times when no maternity nurse is available but other nurses have been able to work with physicians and fill in quite well.