Physicians at two New Brunswick hospitals are defending the Vitalité Health Network’s leadership team, and its CEO, on the use of travel nurses.
Doctors from Moncton’s Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont and the Stella-Maris-de-Kent in Sainte-Anne-de-Kent, near Richibucto, held a news conference Wednesday to voice their support for Vitalité.
They said a total of 306 doctors from the hospitals are unanimous in their belief that travel nurses were crucial in offsetting a critical shortage.
The statement of support comes after the release of a report from New Brunswick Auditor General Paul Martin earlier this month, which stated that Vitalité spent $123 million on contracts for travel nurses.
The process through which the contracts were signed was also highly criticized this week by former PC health minister Dorothy Shephard.
The doctors say the public was not made aware of the severity of working conditions when the decision to pursue costly travel-nurse contracts was made.
Had they known, Dr. Yves Thibeault said, they may have better understood the need.
“Every day, we had to go with the nurses and see if we were able to do all the patients,” said Thibeault, who is co-head of the nephrology department, which provides dialysis treatment at the Dumont hospital.
Vitalité has been criticized for the $98M travel-nurse contract it signed with Canadian Health Labs.
“Everytime I was having a consultation, I was thinking, ‘Ah darn, I have another patient that needs dialysis, what am I going to do?’ I should not have to live with that. I should not have to deal with this kind of decision.”
Thibeault said the addition of travel nurses gave local nurses in the units some room to breathe — and to go home.
“A few weeks after, they saw the change,” he said.
“They saw that they were able to go home. They were not asked to do overtime. They were able to feed their kids, to say goodnight to their kids — so that’s a lot.”
The physicians also called on the government to support more stability in health-care leadership at large, including Vitalité’s current board of directors and its CEO, Dr. France Desrosiers.
According to Dr. Linda LeBlanc, co-chair of the Dumont’s medical and dental staff, Vitalité’s current governance model is like a ‘revolving door’ because of how appointments and dismissals are handled for leadership roles.
“In 16 years, since 2008, Vitalité has seen eight CEOs, eight board of director presidents and one trustee,” Leblanc said in French.
LeBlanc also said the government’s “reactive and short-term policies” have caused an unstable environment for the staff.
They asked the government to help facilitate better recruiting strategies and to continue to improve access to health care in the province.
Vitalité leaders are set to appear before the province’s standing committee on public accounts on Thursday.