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A smaller staff will be taking on the work at UPEI’s patient medical home as Health P.E.I. searches for more nurse practitioners.
The patient medical home — which assigns some patients to a team of care providers instead of to a single doctor or nurse practitioner — is supposed to have five nurse practitioners, Health P.E.I. said.
Three of those nurse practitioners have taken or will take jobs elsewhere within Health P.E.I., leaving two nurse practitioners working in the shared model alongside two family doctors.
Kim Sears, president of the P.E.I. Nurses’ Union, said nurse practitioners expressed concern about safely keeping up with “the rapid pace of onboarding and affiliation.”
Kim Sears, president of the P.E.I. Nurses’ Union, says nurse practitioners had concerns about safely keeping up with ‘the rapid pace of onboarding and affiliation.’ (Rick Gibbs/CBC)
“I think the pressures are enormous for … the Health P.E.I. leadership team and government. They do want to get people off the registry. Certainly, the union wants to see that. Our nurses want to see that, the public wants to see that,” she said.
“I think we need to, like, further slow down, not onboard, affiliate anyone else till we fill these gaps because we know what happens if we overwhelm our health-care workers and they feel unsafe and unsupportive … and we just cannot have this model fail.”
The medical home has about 2,600 patients, with more Islanders expected to be assigned there in months and years ahead.
At the end of September, the provincial patient registry had 31,707 people waiting to be assigned to a primary care provider.
In a statement, Health P.E.I. said it does not comment on individual employee matters, but recruitment efforts continue with a focus on ensuring patients have access to team-based primary care services.
“While there have been some staffing changes, including employees moving into other roles within the organization, work on team-based affiliation at the patient medical home at UPEI is continuing and we are implementing this fall,” the statement reads.
“We value and support our teams, including those pursuing professional opportunities across Health P.E.I.”
Health P.E.I. said it is posting the upcoming vacant nurse practitioner positions with an aim to fill them as quickly as possible, and that reductions in care are not expected.
Sears says the UPEI patient medical home is ‘truly a great concept’ that the P.E.I. Nurses’ Union fully supports. (Rick Gibbs/CBC)
Sears called the patient medical home “truly a great concept” that the nurses’ union fully supports, but Health P.E.I. and the provincial government “need to pull out all the stops” to fill the vacant positions and put a pause on removing people from the registry.
For those currently working at the medical home, she urged them to “hang on.”
“Now, we need to focus on doing it safely, strategically and not going backwards and not losing any more staff,” she said.
“Hopefully … we can work collaboratively with Health P.E.I. and government, fill those positions and continue to move forward with this concept in a safe, sustainable way that supports Islanders, the health-care team and the communities at large.”