Emergency department closures due to nursing shortage quadrupled in southern Manitoba

Emergency departments in Manitoba's Southern Health region are closing more frequently because there are not enough nurses to work, according to data from the health authority.

CBC News received a document with the data from the Manitoba Nurses Union, which it had obtained from Southern Health-Santé Sud through a freedom of information request.

The data shows that the number of times an emergency department was closed due to a nursing shortage has increased nearly four-fold.

"People are obviously disappointed," said Al Friesen, the mayor of Altona, Man. — one of the towns in the region affected by the closures. 

"People feel strongly about the delivery of care in their community."

The document outlined the frequency of emergency department closures in the Southern Health region from Jan. 1, 2017, to Nov. 9, 2021. Each time a department closes, it's tallied under one of five reasons: nursing resources, physician resources, nurse and physician resources, lab unavailable and overflow.

In 2017, there were 35 closures in the "nursing resources" category, and in 2018 there were 26. But in 2021, that number jumped to 126.

The closures took place in Altona, Carman, DeSalaberry, Lorne, Morris, Notre Dame, Rock Lake and Ste. Anne. The highest number of closures were in Morris and Altona.

A nurse who works at the Bethesda Regional Health Centre, a regional hospital in Steinbach, Man., where patients are directed to during closures, told CBC News that patients are having to wait longer when they arrive because the hospital is already short-staffed.

"This is considered a regional centre and we are not allowed to close our doors, so we get into a staffing crisis and we somehow have to figure out how to make it work," she said. "It's incredibly scary to see emergency rooms closing beds because of staffing shortages."

The nurse said on a typical day, Bethesda's emergency department is short one to three nurses. Many who worked there have left due to medical stress, maternity leave and "greener pastures," she said. 

Another emergency nurse at the hospital said it's stressful to deal with patients who are often getting angrier because of longer wait times.

CBC News is protecting the identity of both nurses because they fear being fired for speaking out. 

The second nurse said being constantly being mandated to work overtime adds to the stress and exhaustion.