The mother of a 10-year-old child who recently spent two weeks in the Janeway, calls nurse staffing levels in the Intensive Care Unit “unacceptable.”

Amie Richards’ daughter was born premature, and has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and chronic lung disease. She was recently admitted to the ICU with influenza.

Richards says her daughter has had frequent visits to the hospital in her young life, and staffing problems there have only gotten worse.

She says in the two weeks her daughter was in hospital, there were four 24-hour shifts pulled by nurses. Richards says there would have been five, but a manager stepped in and did the shift herself.

She says while there are six beds in the ICU unit, only 3 beds can be used at any one time because there aren’t enough nurses. That means that if the unit is full, children requiring a bed in the ICU are sometimes flown to IWK in Halifax, or even Boston.

Richards is raising the matter publicly because she’s hoping it will catch the attention of candidates in the ongoing provincial election.