Dryden Regional Health Centre/CKDR Files
A nearly perfect vaccination rate with the February 23 deadline looming for all staff of the Dryden Regional Health Centre to roll up their sleeves.
It was announced in November that all employees, physicians, volunteers, learners and other affiliates would have to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to enter the building.
“We are very pleased with our vaccination rate, we are close to 99 per cent now and are just working one on one with those few staff who can not get vaccinated for various reasons at this time,” President and CEO Doreen Armstrong Ross tells us. “We are going to meet our 100 per cent mandatory vaccination deadline. We really thank all of our staff for stepping up and taking that step to protect themselves, their patients and co workers.”
The DRHC also continues to monitor their staffing level and Ross explains while they already had a small staff before the pandemic, hospitals across the province experiencing unprecedented staffing shortages due to the highly contagious Omicron variant.
“Our bigger challenge, staffing wise, will be staff that are exposed and become positive and have to be off for some time.”
Ross continues, “We are seeing patients in the organization that are COVID positive absolutely and we expect that we’ll probably see more and more as it becomes more prevalent with Omicron. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve had precautions in place for both patients and our staff to maintain safety and be able to, at the same time, care for everybody.”
As of January 5, the Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora was at their lowest staffing level since before the pandemic. However, the reasons vary aside from COVID-19.
“Overall, we have been fortunate,” says Ross. “We are not in the position like some of our colleague hospitals to have to make decisions around services, that sort of thing. But, it is something that requires constant vigilance to recruit staff into the organization to ensure we have appropriate staffing level. We’re okay, at this time.”
At the same time, patients awaiting surgery at the DRHC will be contacted if their surgery is postponed.
The Ford Government introduced new restrictions on January 3 including the directive to pause all non-emergency surgeries due to rising hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
