AHS needs to halt plan to slash staffing at Cross Cancer Institute, provide transparency: UNA president
For immediate release: Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020
Significant staffing cuts planned by Alberta Health Services for the Cross Cancer Institute (CCI) will compromise patient safety and care, say nurses working in the Edmonton facility.
Nurses and other health care workers at CCI are already dealing with understaffing on many shifts, and AHS plans to implement the so-called Operational Best Practices (OBP) program is expected to reduce front-line clinical staffing by about 20 per cent in the in-patient department through attrition, said United Nurses of Alberta President Heather Smith.
AHS proposes to change the staff-to-patient ratio at CCI to one staff member to five patients from the current normal levels of one to four and one to three if acuity levels are high.
Most of the affected front-line health care workers will be Registered Nurses based on what staff were told at a meeting with facility managers last week, Smith said. [Read more]