Members of the BC Nurses Union are rallying, holding a "wear black" campaign and lobbying politicians in a bid to draw attention to what they describe as ongoing overcrowding and understaffing at University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George.
Debra McPherson, BCNU president met Thursday with nurses and the media to talk about the issues.
The nurse's campaign Safe Care Now is designed to raise awareness and propose solutions to the issues at UHNBC.
During the past two years, nurses say they have filed more than 250 documents called Professional Responsibility Forms and submitted them to Northern Health management to address.
"Faced with lengthy delays in having these forms addressed, the nurses have asked their union (BCNU) to assist them in moving the process forward," said McPherson.
The two sides met Feb. 4 at which time NH acknowledged that collaborative problem-solving involving the nurses is required to identify solutions, McPherson said.
A joint steering committee is set to meet March 7 to review nurses concerns.
But BCNU officials would like to see short-term solutions in the interim, such as immediate hiring of agency nurses, increased hiring of new graduate nurses and increased training of emergency room and intensive care unit nurses to ease the nurse staffing problem, and as well, BCNU wants nurse representatives to participate in the hospital's critical care working group.
In an earlier interview on the issues, Michael McMillan, NH chief operating officer, said there's an element of valid points in what the nurses are saying.
"There are times when the loads get very heavy - like winter when respiratory patient counts go up or a bad flu hits. But every single day we track the hours of care per patient for each unit. The majority of time we're comfortable with our level of care. Patient care is our number one priority," said McMillan.
He said most of the problems stem from the specialty areas like ICU and Emergency that require specially trained nurses.
"We're working towards better levels, especially in ICU, through more training programs for newer nurses, but more work needs to be done. It's a complex system that also requires support for new specialty nurses in order to keep them," McMillan said.
