Island Health poaching care aides from senior's care; move could destabilize long-term care sector

Island Health is actively recruiting care aides from existing jobs in the long-term care sector to meet a shortage created by its own controversial plan to replace professional nurses in acute care. An ad on Island Health's intranet site identifying "85 new regular full-time and part-time health care assistant vacancies" invites applications from existing employees to allow its Care Delivery Model Redesign (CDMR) to proceed.

"Clearly Island Health failed to develop a proper human health resource management plan as part of its scheme to replace nurses with unlicensed care aides," says BCNU South Islands region co-chair Adriane Gear. "This is more of the 'ready, fire, aim' approach by Island Health management, which has consistently ignored the risks to patient safety under CDMR."

"It's unconscionable that Island Health is now resorting to a quick fix by poaching care aides from its own understaffed long-term care sector," says Gear. "Residents in seniors' care homes are going to pay a steep price for Island Health's failure to plan adequately."

In late December, Island Health abruptly delayed its CDMR implementation date from mid-January to April 23, 2014. The scheme, which proposes replacing 122 professional nurses with unlicensed care aides at Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital, didn't account for the additional care aides it would require.

"This is yet more evidence that Island Health doesn't have a clue what it's doing when it comes to patient care," says BCNU South Islands region co-chair Margo Wilton. "Subjecting seniors in long-term care to increased risk in order to implement a plan that also puts acute care patients at increased risk is a lose-lose plan."

"When you consider that CDMR itself is a hastily contrived scheme to meet budget-driven objectives in acute care, resourcing it at the expense of patient safety in long-term care only compounds the error," says Wilton. "Island Health shouldn't just defer CDMR, it should abandon it entirely because it's flawed from start to finish."

"This move has the potential to destabilize seniors' care on Vancouver Island. We're calling on Island Health to immediately put CDMR on hold pending an independent, expert review of its potential patient safety impacts."