Registered Nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador plugged in about 300,000 hours of overtime in the fiscal year which ended as the pandemic began and while they don’t have any updated numbers, the union expects the amount of overtime during the pandemic years to be much greater.
The Registered Nurses Union says the health care system can’t sustain that for much longer.
President Yvette Coffey says government will have to address the issue in Thursday’s budget.
She says patients being admitted with COVID are being held in emergency for two and three days because there are no beds. Coffey points out that it’s not really a shortage of beds—it’s a shortage of nurses to care for the people in those beds.