Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 11/02) - The morale at Stanton Regional Hospital has catapulted from where it was this time last year, say employees.

That is because the surgery ward has been re-opened since Sept. 17 after over a year of putting surgery patients into whatever ward could fit them.

Marlene Shott recently graduated from the registered nursing program at Aurora College. She is of the new recruits who work in the recently re-opened surgery ward. - Dawn Ostrem/NNSL photo

"The morale then was not good and it was not a happy place to work," explained nurse Marlene Shott.

She graduated from the registered nursing program at Aurora College shortly before the ward re-opened, after the health board recruited the nurses needed to do so.

She is an example of what needs to be done so the hospital does not find itself in the same kind of bind in the future, according to Stanton Regional Health Board executive director Dennis Cleaver.

He said not having the ward open stretched beyond what was expected because of difficulty recruiting nurses from the south. Training in the North is said to be the best way to fix that problem.

Cleaver said when the ward first closed in July 2000, it was not out of the ordinary and that the ward routinely closed over Christmas and summer breaks.

When it came time to re-open in September 2000 it was decided to keep it closed longer as a cost-saving measure. After a public outcry the board wanted to re-open in October but a national shortage of nurses kept it closed until nearly four months ago.

Even so, the re-opening came at the eve of the first projected balanced budget in two years. Cleaver said that is a clear indication that spending is under control, a large step in alleviating an accumulated $1.6 million deficit.

"One of the things we need to do over the course of several years is work with the Department of Health and Social Services to pay off that deficit without affecting programs," he added.

Overspending in the last two years resulted mainly from staff turnovers, medical travel and security costs to update the psychiatric unit among other things, Cleaver said.

This year's projected balanced budget is the result of money deemed "forced growth" capital from health and social services and "general belt-tightening."

Before the September re-opening the health board recruited 40 to 50 new nurses to serve on different wards in the hospital.

Approximately 14 are now scheduled to work in the ward.

"We have a super new staff now," Shott said.

Even a short routine closure of the ward between Dec. 23 and Jan. 7 for the holidays was enough to disrupt the fluid system that the ward is now a part of.

"Even then morale goes down because people are placed all over the place," she said.

Chief of surgery Dr. David Cook agreed.

"It is going really well now. The nurses are happy, the surgeons are happy," he said. "Now I know that my patients will be in one place and cared for by surgery-trained nurses."