The good news is that Quinte Health, in a highly competitive market, managed to hire an additional 106 new staff for its hospitals last year, among them nurses, and family and specialist physicians.
The bad news is that major staffing shortages continue to put a strain on medical staff and those pressures are expected to continue.
Quinte Health President and CEO Stacey Daub says the population in the region is increasing and it’s growing older and that makes recruiting staff very difficult.
“So we are really looking for support from government to grow services in our region so that we can make sure that we can keep pace with the tremendous growth happening in our community.”
Recruitment efforts continue for medical staff from many disciplines.
Meanwhile, a shortage of internists has forced a change to team-based care in Trenton and Belleville whereby internists, family doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners communicate daily on how best a patient should be treated.
So far the system has worked well.
