B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix says changes start today at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, where staff have complained about bullying, secrecy and retaliation.
Consultants from Vector Group, who surveyed 473 workers at the hospital, described the organizational culture as “toxic” and said that fear, suspicion and loathing predominate the staff’s thinking about administration — a situation they said is past the “tipping point,” but fixable.
Dix said that work would start immediately.
“My message is very plain, that the success of health care in the 21st century involves teams working together in the community and in hospitals,” he said. “And my expectation is that will happen and that the response to this report will be immediate and comprehensive.”
Dr. David Forrest, president of the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital Medical Staff Association, which represents about 250 physicians, said the Vector Group report validates long-standing concerns voiced by health-care workers.
Forrest suspects the report’s description of a systemic, heavy-handed approach where budgetary concerns trump people, could apply elsewhere in the Vancouver Island Health Authority and across the province.
“The health-care workplace environment is one where there is this top-down approach that is one of controlling and muffling the staff,” he said.
“And so it is a culture of sort of fear and intimidation that is not conducive to the best health-care decision-making and the best delivery of care to patients.”
Damian Lange, the hospital’s director of clinical operations, said patients are getting safe and quality care. The report gives a sense of the breadth and depth of the concerns and provides a foundation for change, he said. “We have, perhaps, too many priorities and need to focus on our people,” Lange said. He said if people and patients are the focus, the budget will fall into place.
Lange couldn’t say what, if any, effect the changes might have on leadership jobs. “The first step in this process is acknowledging the reality … that we have a number of staff feeling distressed and concerned about their workplace and the culture within it.”
Everyone owns a piece of the problem and factors into the healing, he said.
Lange agreed that it is “frightening” to hear that staff would ask family and friends to take them to another hospital if they fell ill, but said he has no such hesitation.
The report also touched on the controversy raised by the IHealth electronic records system. The $174-million, paperless health-records system was launched in March 2016 at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Dufferin Place residential care centre in Nanaimo and Oceanside Health Centre in Parksville.
The system sparked protests from some doctors, who said it caused dangerous dosage errors and took time away from patient care.
Forrest said it also brought to the fore problems that had existed for years.
Dix said he expects the results of an independent review into the IHealth system very soon.
