Staffing will be a challenge for new mental health facility

Speaking at Friday’s announcement, Premier David Eby said the success of the province’s health-care recruitment efforts gives him confidence that the new facilities will be able to attract the specialized workforce needed to operate them.

“One of the things that we’ve seen in terms of our health-care recruitment drive is policies and initiatives put in place by the provincial government are attracting professionals to British Columbia to come and work here,” Eby said.

The premier pointed to the province’s efforts to recruit health-care workers from the United States as an example.

“We’ve had particular success with our American recruitment drive,” he said. “For example, nurses over the last couple of years, we’ve got 5,600 nurses that add about 10 per cent to the nursing population in the province.”

Eby said many of the nurses he has met cite improved working conditions and staffing initiatives as reasons for choosing British Columbia.

“When I meet with those nurses, I talk with them. I had the opportunity in Nanaimo to engage with a number of American nurses who were coming up to think about coming to British Columbia,” he said. “They know about our ratio program and our province’s efforts to improve working conditions.”

While acknowledging that staffing challenges remain across the health-care system, Eby said initiatives such as the new involuntary-care centres could help attract professionals interested in making a meaningful impact on complex social and health issues.

“Our hope is that this initiative will work the same way in terms of recruiting the kinds of professionals we’re looking for,” he said. “Here is a new program from the ground up that you get to participate in, the design of and implementing, that is addressing a chronic and serious social issue.”

Eby argued that one of the frustrations experienced by mental-health professionals is encountering patients whose needs exceed the services available to them.

“What doesn’t draw in professionals is the idea of meeting a patient and not being able to deliver the care that they need,” he said. “Facilities like this will enable that integrated care system that will attract the professionals we’re looking for.”

The recruitment challenge will be significant, according to Dr. Daniel Vigo, B.C.’s first chief scientific adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders.

“Staffing is a challenge,” Vigo acknowledged.

However, he believes the province’s recent experience recruiting workers from outside B.C. demonstrates that targeted recruitment strategies can be successful.

“As was mentioned by Premier Eby, when the government works in lockstep and the adequate set of incentives is out there, we can get, like we’re getting, a number of colleagues from, for example, the U.S.,” he said.

Vigo said the key to long-term success will be creating consistency across health authorities while ensuring that facilities are adequately resourced and connected to broader community care systems.

“I think that when we start having a consistent, homogeneous approach to engagement and retention of key staff across health authorities, with no inconsistencies and without confusing what the priorities are, we make that approach something that is appealing,” he said.

He pointed to specialized services such as assertive community treatment teams and flexible assertive community treatment programs as important parts of the broader continuum of care.

Combined with new facilities such as the Prince George centre and existing specialized services like Red Fish Healing Centre in Coquitlam, Vigo said the province can create a work environment that attracts and retains mental-health professionals.

“That will generate a different environment in which people actually want to work,” he said.

For northern B.C., recruitment efforts are expected to focus on a range of medical professionals beyond psychiatrists alone.

Dr. Barbara Kane, medical lead for mental health services at the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia, said planning is already underway to determine what types of clinicians will be required when the facility opens.

“I think part of what I’ll almost certainly be involved in is trying to recruit the psychiatrist, for example, who would be working here or other doctors,” Kane said.

“We’re not just going to need psychiatrists. We’re going to need addiction doctors, family doctors probably. We don’t know exactly yet, but we’ll probably need nurse practitioners.”

Kane acknowledged filling those positions will not be easy, particularly at a time when health systems across Canada continue to compete for qualified professionals.

“It’s definitely going to be a challenge,” she said.

But Kane remains optimistic the facility will attract staff interested in working with people who have severe and persistent mental-health issues.

“There are people who like to deal with people with serious mental-health problems, and they like to deal with people when it’s going to be a long haul,” she said.

Unlike short-term hospital stays, the involuntary-care model will involve ongoing treatment and rehabilitation, creating opportunities for health-care workers to build long-term therapeutic relationships with patients.

“There’s lots of nurses that like that longitudinal relationship,” Kane said.

She added that psychiatric treatment facilities often retain staff once positions are filled because many workers find the work rewarding despite its challenges.

“I think we’ll find people,” she said. “I think that other psychiatric-type facilities, once they get staff, they usually keep them.”

Kane said there is already evidence of local interest in the project from health-care workers looking for opportunities in specialized mental-health care.

“I know that there are people who are interested in working here already because I’ve had staff who I didn’t even know come up to me and say, ‘I want to know when it’s opening because I’m interested in working there,'” she said.

While she acknowledged patients in the facility will often present complex challenges, Kane said many professionals are drawn to the opportunity to make a significant difference in people’s lives.

“They can be very challenging patients, but it can also be pretty rewarding,” she said.

The Prince George facility is expected to play a key role in the province’s evolving approach to mental-health and addictions treatment by providing secure, integrated care for some of B.C.’s most vulnerable residents while expanding access to specialized services closer to home for people living in northern communities.

by Cheryl Jahn

Staffing will be a challenge for new mental health facility

What's Trending