![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/new-bc-ndp-government-cabinet-members-josie-osborne.jpg\")
Health Minister Josie Osborne says the province is working hard to recruit new doctors and nurses. (Mike McArthur\/CBC)<\/p>\nAfter the emergency room at Delta Hospital closed for more than 12 hours Saturday night due to a doctor staffing shortage, one city councillor is calling the situation a “public health emergency.”<\/p>\n
Fraser Health said in a news release the interruption would last 12\u00bd hours from 6 p.m. Saturday to 6:30 a.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n
It’s the fourth\u00a0time the Delta emergency room has closed this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The health authority said emergency-trained nurses would remain on site during the interruption\u00a0to help walk-in patients with basic care and to help redirect or transfer patients to neighbouring hospitals.<\/p>\n
Delta Coun. Dylan Kruger called the ER closure a failing of the B.C. government.<\/p>\n
“The province has known about these staffing and capacity issues for years, yet here we are again. Another night, another closure,” Kruger said in a statement.<\/p>\n
He said council had requested a meeting with B.C.’s Health Minister about the issue last week at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, but Josie Osborne did not take the meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I am tired of issuing calls for the province to step up. I’m tired of asking the province to take responsibility and fix what is clearly broken,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We need change now,” he concluded.<\/p>\n
Fraser Health apologized to the community for the inconvenience in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
It noted it is “almost always successful” in preventing emergency department service interruptions and cited its average prevention rate of 99 per cent.<\/p>\n
Prioritize staffing: Advocate<\/p>\n
Dr. Charlene Lui, president of Doctors of B.C., said recruitment and retention of workers in the province has long been a challenge for hospitals, especially emergency departments.<\/p>\n
She said it takes a “special kind of workforce” to staff ERs.<\/p>\n
“The ER … is a very stressful place, and it is very intense, and it takes a lot of dedication for our workers, for our physicians.”<\/p>\n
Lui said staffing, for all positions in the hospital and not just doctors,\u00a0needs to be the highest priority.<\/p>\n
“We know that waiting for care when patients don’t feel well causes a lot of frustration, and oftentimes, unfortunately, that frustration comes out in their interactions with health-care professionals.”<\/p>\n
She said recruiting more security would allow health-care workers to do their job without worrying for their own safety, while adding more administrative staff would let health-care workers focus on patients directly.<\/p>\n
Lui\u00a0added relaxing credentialing processes would help, as well as allowing staff to move to the areas that need them most.<\/p>\n
She said she’s hoping for a province-wide urgent stabilization plan for emergency departments across the province, noting that when ERs in urban cities like Delta are having trouble, rural areas are even more challenged.<\/p>\n
“We’re asking for urgent resumption of conversations with our ministry and health authority so we can really work to fix this problem \u2014 quickly.”<\/p>\n
‘Long-term issue’: health minister\u00a0<\/p>\n
B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne said ER closures are “extremely tough news.”<\/p>\n
“We know the emergency room has to be there for us,” she said.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Josie Osborne says the province is working hard to recruit new doctors and nurses. (Mike McArthur\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Osborne said the government is in the process of recruiting more physicians and nurses from the U.S. and training more in B.C.<\/p>\n
“We know this is a long-term issue that we’ve got to really build out the health-care workforce so that we don’t see these kinds of disruptions.”Osborne said from January through August this year, the province saw a 25 per cent reduction in hours of emergency rooms that are closed compared to 2024.<\/p>\n
She said she’s been in discussions with Delta’s mayor and council around the need for its own urgent and primary care centre in the city.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to expanding the urgent and primary care system that we’ve built up…. We are aware and know that Delta has those needs as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the emergency room at Delta Hospital closed for more than 12 hours Saturday night due to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-201667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}