Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

NNSL (Apr 19/99) - The good news about health care in the Baffin region is that the health board has managed to secure its own block of housing for its staff.

This means that the days of long waiting periods and losing staff due to unavailable or inappropriate accommodations are in the past.

"We have undertaken a lease with Nova Construction," said Jarvis Hoult, the chief executive officer of the Baffin Regional Hospital and the regional health and social services board.

He explained that he had managed to secure 10-year, fixed-rent leases on three different newly-constructed buildings with a total of 16 units, eight of which are one-bedroom and eight of which are two and three-bedroom units.

Instead of having to wait for available housing along with other municipal and territorial government employees, health-care professionals now have fairly immediate access to the new units.

"We understand it's a necessary evil when you wait in line, but part of the problem we've been running into is that we have a lot of turnover and when you give up a house in the pool, the unit goes back into the pool and we have to start all over again," said Hoult.

The board will continue to utilize other residential buildings in Iqaluit, but Hoult explained that the acquisition would likely help with the recruitment and the retention of long-term staff.

"We now offer a broader range of accommodation and that makes us a more attractive employer," said Hoult.

"It's a strategy. We need to be able to be as attractive as we can as employers to people we've invited to come and work for us."

The bad news however, is that no new people -- at least as far as the nursing staff goes -- will be coming to work at the Iqaluit hospital in the near future. This is unfortunate in that the current nursing complement, as of last Friday, was down by 11.6 nurses.

At full staff, 35 nurses are required to run the different sections of the hospital. After the last of the short-term nurses went home and the resignations of full-time staff became official, the number dropped to just 23.4.

"When we get down to those levels, we really start taking second looks at everything we do," said Marsha Duggan, the manager of patient care and services.

She explained that patient intakes and releases were being strictly monitored in an effort to maintain the workload of the on-duty nurses.

"We're constantly prioritizing and becoming more stringent. When we have to call someone in, it drains the nurses' energy level and we're constantly trying to keep our chins up," said Duggan.

Heading off on a recruiting drive to Newfoundland this week, she said she hoped the numbers would come back up as soon as possible and that their last resort was to send patients out to other facilities for care.

"That definitely is our last line of defence. We sure don't plan to do that, but if we had absolutely no other choice, then we would have to consider that."

Hoult added that other, more aggressive recruiting techniques were in the works in other Canadian provinces.