“We’re a floundering ship’: WRHA nurse overtime set to top 400,000 hours

Extremely high overtime hours have been logged by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) in 2022.

Just shy of 400,000 hours of overtime has been logged by WRHA nurses from January to November this year.

"Our overtime is growing everyday,” Manitoba Nurses Union President Darlene Jackson said. “We are keeping our heads above water with overtime and agency nurse use. And if we weren't doing that - we're a floundering ship. I would say our ship would have sunk by now."

In data obtained by CTV News from the WRHA - most of the overtime hours have been logged at its five Winnipeg hospitals.

And St. Boniface hospital topped the list at more than 165 thousand overtime hours.

That data does not include the Health Sciences Centre - which is operated by Shared Health. "Patient, resident, client and staff safety is our top priority,” the WRHA says in a statement. “Despite the ongoing challenges in the health care system, staff continue to step up every day to ensure the care and safety of all patients."

It says there is a recruitment and retention committee, focused on reducing the existing nurse vacancy and lowering overall overtime hours.

The province of Manitoba says it too is working on this - having recently announced a $200 million pledge to recruit and train 2,000 more health care workers. CTV News has reached out to the province to find out how many of those positions will be nurses.

"Even if we put out 2,000 nurses today, that would not fill vacancies and it also would not fill the number of nurses who are eligible to retire,” Jackson said. “We have many, many nurses who are eligible to retire."

Jackson says some nurses are leaving the profession all together.

"(There’s) a decline in their mental health just because of the amount of hours they do - but also the work load when they're there."