It’s not hip to be in chronic pain and Petra Haus jokingly refers to her 11-year background in veterinary surgery as a possible solution to her husband’s misery.
“I would do my husband’s hip surgery and he’d either be better or worse, there would be a 50-50 chance,” laughed Haus. “It’s just sad, the process right now, due to technicality, it takes so long.”
Eleven months ago, Karl was put on the surgical wait list when a specialist determined his deteriorating hip socket was no longer holding his leg bone in place and his dissolving femur was grinding into the tissue of his body cavity whenever he put weight on it.
The 61-year-old joint owner of Pastry Chef on George Street has been working at that job since 1977, when he was 18, and he and Petra have owned the bakery since 1985. After 47 years of mixing bread and pacing the cement floor, taking heavy trays from the racks to the ovens to the tables, it has taken a toll on his body. He had knee replacements on both legs a few years ago and now his hip is worn out, and that pain makes a job he loves miserable.
There are currently 384 patients on the wait list at University Hospital of Northern BC for hip replacement surgery. During the period from March 1 - May 31, 50 per cent of patients had their surgeries within 27.5 weeks of being placed on the wait list, while 90 per cent had their hips done within 53 weeks. Nine surgeons in the city do that procedure.
In the Northern Health region, 420 await hip replacements. The March-May wait times were 21.6 weeks for 50 per cent of patients and 50.1 weeks for 90 per cent. By comparison, Fraser Health patients, over the same period, waited 15 weeks (50 per cent of patients) and 42 weeks (90 per cent).
In Karl’s case, he’s been waiting since August 2020 and his hip continues to worsen. He’s been on the hospital’s emergency cancelation list for two months and still has no indication when his surgery will be scheduled.
First opened in September 1955, Pastry Chef is recognized as the last remaining artisan bakeries in northern B.C. and Karl is of one of three bakers on the staff of 15. When he has his surgery, the bakery will go to reduced hours, open only Thursday-Saturday instead of five-day weeks, until he’s able to work again. During the heatwave this past week it became a sweat shop when the production room temperature in hit 57 C on the hottest night of his graveyard shifts.
“I guess I just have to bide my time and grin and bear it,” said Karl. “The surgeon said my right leg is actually an inch shorter than the eft one. The bone is used up and it’s going into my torso. It’s friggin’ painful but what can I do. If it wasn’t for the pain I could keep working until I’m 80, but not like this.”
The bakery will be closed all next week while the Haus’s travel south to try and find another doctor to perform Karl’s surgery quicker. Petra has tried calling the UHNBC booking department and sent a letter to MLA Shirley Bond to state her case and speed the process, but to no avail. They looked into private surgery but cannot afford the cost, estimated between $25,000 and $30,000 and also were told there are no surgeons or staff available.
“At home he has crutches to support himself but in the bakery with crutches on a cement floor, that’s asking for disaster and WCB would be hanging me on the next tree,” said Petra. “I don’t know how much longer he can do it.”
Petra has regular customers who work at UHNBC and they have told her it’s not a shortage of doctors or operating time that’s made him wait nearly a year for his procedure; it stems from a lack of nurses and support staff.
The pandemic has impacted staffing levels at the hospital and some front-line workers who have young children have had to give up their jobs or work reduced hours because day care facilities closed during the lockdowns and some never reopened, creating a shortage of childcare spaces in the city. Petra serves customers at the bakery and was told some nurses have suggested to their bosses that the fourth floor of UHNBC, reserved for hospital administrative staff before the pandemic hit, be turned into a day care to provide what employees of CNC, UNBC and the YMCA of Northern BC have with their in-house child-minding facilities. She said that would allow more hospital staff more flexibility to work their shifts, which often start and finish at odd hours when traditional day care centres do not operate.
“The nurses have been asking since last year, since the pandemic started, for a local day care because the fourth floor is completely closed,” said Petra. “The employees, as we get told, say their kids have nowhere to go and they’ve been forced to stay home, and here the patients are on waiting lists because they don’t have enough staff.
“I would like Northern Health to get their heads out of the butts, open their eyes and give the people who they have, who are willing to work, and give them a chance to have a place where their kids are safe and they can go worry-free back to their jobs again. How come the largest employer in Prince George – Northern Health – is unable to find the funds to make a day care?”
Northern Health officials were unavailable for comment over the weekend, but Danette Thomsen of the B.C. Nurses Union is all in favour of the idea of converting UHNBC office space at to a childcare facility. Thomsen, the BCNU regional council northeast representative, says Northern Health should seriously consider any proposal that might reduce stress levels of hospital staff.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” said Thomsen. “I know we have a very young workforce or those really close to retirement, and we have lots of nurses choosing to work casually so they can work opposite shifts to their partners, so they don’t have to pay the high day care costs.
“Many of them have student loans they’re paying off, so I think Northern Health and the province need to look at where is this $10 an hour day care that we’ve been promised. Most day cares don’t open when they start their shifts and many of them are not home until 7:30 at night.”
Thomsen said nursing staff shortages exist throughout the province and the pandemic has only exacerbated the problems hospitals are experiencing. The B.C. auditor general’s report in February 2018 showed Northern Health was unable to fill 121 (15 per cent) of its 790 full-time positions for registered nurses in the previous year and vacancies in seven smaller health area of the region were short by more than 20 per cent. This year in February she said there were close to 300 unfilled nursing positions in Prince George.
“We were short before the (COVID) crisis, so morale is terrible,” Thomsen said. “When you work short all the time, honestly, our units are short more than they’re not. They’re begging for staff, begging each other to come in. Coming through COVID, a lot of our nurses are not able to get vacation time off now. They’re not machines, they’re not robots, they need to be supported. They really do not feel supported. COVID and day care and just moral distress has really magnified this across the health authority.”
Thomsen said nurses caring for their own children are often unable to accept overtime shifts on short notice due to difficulties arranging childcare without sufficient warning and those shifts go unfilled, which adds to the stress on those working that day.
“The shortage is just so great, I’m hearing stories of new grads who haven’t even had orientation being out on a medical floor as the only RN – that’s nine patients she would be responsible for with an LPN licensed practical nurse),” said Thomsen.
“Those things give nurses stress beyond belief and yes we have licences we’re worried about losing but it’s not the licence, it’s the patient in those beds. When you can’t get to them and raise eyes on them and you’ve worked for 12 hours, so stressed that something is going to go wrong - these are people’s lives.”
