Concern over cancelled vacations for health-care workers as Manitoba addresses surgical backlog

Part of the plan to address Manitoba's mounting surgical and diagnostic backlog is to keep surgical volumes up over summer, which is a time when those procedures usually slow down so staff can get a break.

Now, there's concern a much needed summer vacation may be cancelled for some staff in order to get these procedures done.

WAITING IN PAIN

Daniel Purdon knows what it’s like to wait in pain for hip surgery, as he’s done it once already. He said the wait was about six months the first time around.

Now he needs the other hip done. He said as soon as he noticed it in January, he got on the list for surgery.

“I know just from what I went through with my other one, that I don’t want to wait another year and a half with it deteriorating to the point where I could barely walk,” he said.

Purdon expects the wait to be one and a half to two years because of the pandemic surgical backlog.

This week, the Manitoba government shared how it’s addressing this issue.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon said one strategy is keeping surgery volumes up over summer.

“We know we have planned staff to maintain many sites at between 75 to 100 per cent of surgical capacity over the summer, a time where surgical slates typically drop down to about 40 per cent,” she said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The Manitoba Nurses Union (MNU) said it wasn’t consulted on working through the summer slowdown

“How are we going to do that with our dwindling numbers and our incredibly shallow pool of nurses,” said Darlene Jackson, MNU president

Jackson said there’s a concern from nurses that they’ll be asked to voluntarily work over their scheduled vacation.

A request, she said, has had little uptake in the past.

“I think everyone recognizes that these surgeries do need to be caught up. But if there is not a lot of uptake then the concern is that nurses will be or will have their vacation cancelled and they will basically be told, you are not on vacation next week, you’re coming to work,” she said.

Doctors Manitoba is consulting with its members on the government’s announcement.

In a survey from June of last year, a good proportion of surgeons were interested in additional slates during weekdays or during traditional slowdown periods.

There was also interest in working at other sites, including private facilities.

Purdon said he’ll believe surgical volumes will increase when he sees it.

“You’re asking a lot of the doctors that have already gone through a lot with COVID to pitch in that much more, that’s an awful big ask I think,” he said.

A Shared Health spokesperson told CTV News Winnipeg: “There is no plan to cancel nursing vacations this summer so more surgical slates can be scheduled. A planned increase in slates over the summer was developed by each individual site based on what they could do with projected staffing and did not consider the cancelation of vacation time. Those plans are now in place and are expected to result in approximately 200 additional surgical slates being completed this summer.”