Victoria’s two main hospitals have each reopened one operating room after a staffing shortage forced an extraordinary closure in September.
Island Heath says 20 of 22 general operating rooms are now open — up from just 18 of 22 running last month.
Ten of 12 operating rooms are now open at Royal Jubilee Hospital, in Victoria, and all 10 general operating rooms are running at Victoria General Hospital, in View Royal.
Island Heath president and CEO Kathy MacNeil says it’s back to business as usual after health authority staff and clinicians made a “heroic effort” to find staff to get patients their needed surgeries.
“We’re hoping that the people who were impacted by the delay — that we had announced earlier this fall — will be able to be seen quicker,” said MacNeil.
Surgeons can now have the confidence to book patients “and I think that’s where the reduction in anxiety will come from,” said MacNeil, noting patients can call their surgeons’ offices and get clear information about booking dates.
On the nursing front, the health authority has hired nine new permanent registered nurses, with 11 more in the hiring queue. It’s also filling vacant shifts with casual nursing staff from other parts of the Island, and is hiring agency nurses — who work for private agencies rather than the health authority — to fill shifts in ORs and post-anesthesia recovery units.
“That’s enabled us to open up an extra [operating] room at each site,” said MacNeil.
MacNeil said the plan is to eventually reduce the health authority’s reliance on agency nurses, but they were needed to open the operating rooms more quickly.
Getting the operating rooms open at Royal Jubilee meant providing eight additional surgical short-stay beds and six post-surgical beds.
The health authority said in September that Royal Jubilee Hospital was forced to keep an additional operating room closed for almost two months this fall due to ongoing “workforce challenges.”
Depending on the complexity of any case, an OR might see from two to eight procedures a day. Island Health uses five cases a day as an estimate.
Typically in past years, ORs saw closures over summer holidays and sometimes other lulls, including during winter holidays or spring break. However, the last time the ORs at Victoria’s two main hospitals were fully open was September 2022.
A shortage of health-care workers ranging from specialists and nurses to care aides is affecting everything from hospital operating rooms to emergency rooms in the province, with temporary closures becoming more common.
Island Health says it has taken significant action over the past two months to return south Island operating rooms to full capacity as soon as possible.
That includes using the South Island Surgical Centre and Saanich Peninsula Hospital for more day procedures in orthopedics, general surgery, ear, nose and throat, and pediatric urology cases.
In addition to OR closures, Saanich Peninsula Hospital extended its emergency-room overnight closures in September due to staffing shortages, and there are no plans so far for it to reopen.
MacNeil said the overnight closures have allowed for increased staffing during the day to reduce emergency-room wait times.
“That has given them a bit of space and we’re working with [the doctors] on some plans around physician assistants,” said MacNeil, adding Island Health has told physicians at the hospital that the emergency ward will reopen overnight when “they tell us they’re ready and they feel safe and supported that they have the support there to be providing that 24/7 access.”
