By Cheryl Jahn

Health care absenteeism expected to climb

Jan 13, 2022 | 2:18 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – During the latest update around COVID and the omicron variant, Health Minister Adrian Dix had some startling numbers around absenteeism due to short-term illness – Omicron and everything else – between January 3rd and 9th.

“Approximately 27,937 shifts that health care workers across BC across all sectors called in sick to due to short-term illness. This could be due to COVID-19, due to experienced symptoms of COVID-19, or due to other illnesses,” he noted. “Just to be clear, that’s the total number. They are shifts. If you’re away for a week, that’s five shifts and one person. It’s not 27,000 health care workers.

For Northern health in the same period, 1,308 shifts were lost to illness. As compared to 4,939 shifts lost in Island Health, 4,713 lost in Interior Health and 7,151 shifts lost in Fraser Health, it seems a small number. Or is it?

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“Absolutely not. I think what we have to realize in Northern Health, we are already over 400 nurses short,” explains Danette Thomsen, Interim Vice President of the BC Nurses’ Union. “So one nurse being away sick is crucial up here. It really, really is.”

Dix also noted that the individual health authorities are pulling together contingency plans as Omicron continues to travel rapidly.

“What I would hope that contains is a plan to care for the caregivers. A plan about what we’re going to do to support the nurses who are able to come in. How are we going to support them knowing they’re so short-staffed? I mean I look at the diversions happening in Chetwynd, Mackenzie, Dawson Creek. ER’s are closing. There are not enough nurses now. What are we going to do when Omicron hits?”

She says all she had heard to date are plans to extend shifts, call nurses back from vacation and re-deploying nurses, something she says is extremely challenging.

“You might be a pediatrics nurse and have never worked in emergency. The added stress the re-deployment is having on our membership?”

And sadly, she believes 1,308 lost shifts over a one-week period is just the tip of the iceberg as Omicron begins to take hold.