Vitalité says forced redeployment of nurses to short-staffed ERs will continue

A group representing nurse practitioners in New Brunswick says some of its members in the north are being forced to leave their positions in primary care to fill vacancies in the ER. The group is worried it's not considering patients at the heart of services. In a statement released Sunday, nurse practitioners of New Brunswick says nurse practitioners in the Restigouche area are being pulled from their roles in primary care. It claims they're being forcefully redeployed to the emergency department at the Campbellton Regional Hospital. If anything happens, if that patient has missed testing that they should have had, if they have a missed diagnosis, if they have delayed treatment, Well, then who is legally responsible? It is not the RHA. It is the nurse practitioner. And we have a professional responsibility and obligation to keep our patients safe. Hamilton says the decision is essentially trying to solve a staffing shortage in the ER, but creating a shortage in primary care. She says nurse practitioners provide an essential service in that space and that redeploying them isn't a sustainable solution. So currently, I believe that there are three to four NPs that have been impacted, which I know you can say that's not a large number, but I disagree because what it does is it can certainly set a precedent in future times that any RHA could just feel whenever they wanted to pull a professional from one, you know, area of care to another, that they can do that. In an email, Vitality Health Network said it is relying on temporary forced redeployments for a small number of employees. The network says since the summer, employees from several departments and zones have been voluntarily helping at the Campbellton Hospital while new staff is being trained there, and that it must also rely on the temporary involuntary redeployment of a small number of staff. It's open to working with health care professionals to find sustainable solutions, but says it won't stop involuntary redeployment without another solution in place to maintain critical services first. CBC News reached out to the Department of Health for comment, but has not heard back. The group is calling on Vitalité and the province to stop any forced redeployment right away. It wants patients whose nurse practitioners are affected by the decision to get timely access to a replacement health care provider. The group is also asking for transparency on the rationale behind the move and the impact it might have on primary care in the area. It wants NPs to be involved in decision making and it wants to see a long term plan to address staffing shortages. The whole push of the government is, you know, we have 270,000 to 280,000 patients without a health care provider in New Brunswick. And yet now the government is sitting back and letting this happen and taking more health care providers away from the system to work as registered nurses.