Alberta Health Services (AHS) continues to work diligently on multiple fronts to resolve the staffing challenges in the emergency department at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre (RDRHC).
Every possible option has been explored to ensure patient care is uninterrupted and that our staff have safe and healthy working conditions.
The emergency department at RDRHC remains fully operational, and patients in need of emergency medical care continue to receive it, 24 hours a day.
We are in the process of filling 12 Registered Nurse (RN) vacancies in the department at this time. Offers have been extended to candidates for six of the positions, with interviews concluding this week for another three positions.
Postings for the three remaining vacancies closed July 27, with candidates for those positions shortlisted for interviews.
We are working through the hiring process as quickly as we can, and will have many of these new staff on the unit before the end of August.
Our hiring of nurses to support the emergency department will not stop there. Last week AHS commenced with its recruitment efforts to establish a new regularized relief rotation for critical care at RDRHC.
On July 23 we posted the first eight positions for the rotation which will eventually support the emergency department, ICU and Cardiac care units; for the immediate future these positions will support the emergency department until we are able to stabilize staffing levels.
As well we will be posting an additional seven new permanent part-time RN positions to the AHS Careers page by the end of next week.
These positions will complement the eight positions already posted and will see us achieve our target of 15 net new positions for a regularized relief rotation.
In total, this will see us realize the recruitment of 27 nursing positions to support the emergency department.
Until new staff can begin, and to provide support for our emergency department nurses, we are utilizing the expertise of appropriate nursing staff from other areas of the hospital, as well as hospitals in Calgary, by providing orientation and training to help care for emergency department patients in Red Deer.
We appreciate the unwavering dedication of our staff to their patients and we continue to support them, and work with them, though challenging times such as this to ensure safe care for our patients, and safe and healthy working conditions for our staff.
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