Significant staff shortages impact RVH amid increased hospitalizations

Doctors at the region's largest healthcare centre say that they are seeing the same increases in hospitalizations as the rest of the province; however, the challenge isn't the number of admissions but the number of staff to care for them.

Dr. Chris Martin, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) critical care chief and medical director, says the latest pandemic wave is "characterized by a human resource challenge" with the highly contagious omicron variant.

"We have over 200 staff that are off work right now who either have COVID themselves or who are on isolation because they have someone at home who's with COVID or has had an exposure," says Dr. Martin.

On Friday, a tweet sent out by the Ontario Health Association reported 332 adults are currently in Ontario ICUs with virus-related illnesses, with more than half (176) on ventilators.

In Barrie, 50 people are currently in hospital being treated for COVID-19 at RVH. Five of them have been admitted to the ICU; all but one are on ventilators.

If numbers continue to climb over the next couple of weeks, as provincial modelling suggests it could, that's where the staffing could become the issue.

"We have beds, we have ventilators, but if we don't have qualified nursing and allied health staff to care for the patient, they're not very useful," says Dr. Martin.

"So it's really trying to keep as many people at work as possible and to keep those people supported so that we can last for the weeks and hopefully not months that this may last," he concluded.