More than 700 health care workers have left the Horizon Health Network since the beginning of April and 188 were registered nurses.
Horizon V.P. chief human resources officer Gail Lebel told MLA’s in a legislative committee this week that there are many reasons why staff are leaving.
“Often times people leave for other positions… with more compensation… also burnout. After two years of the pandemic, there’s really a number of reasons. Some people leave health care altogether.”
The Vitalité Health Network lost nearly 500 health care workers in the last fiscal year and 152 were registered nurses.
CEO France Desrosiers said most left due to low morale and heavy workloads.
Meantime, MLA’s had numerous questions for Horizon about the case involving an alleged sexual assault victim who did not receive immediate care recently at the Fredericton Chalmers Hospital.
Interim CEO Margaret Melanson told the committee that improvements to the sexual assault nurse examiner program or SANE are now underway.
She said SANE currently has 26 trained nurses who already have full-time responsibilities.
“We need to move from having individuals available on only a casual basis to having a full-time commitment of nurses in terms of their time being made available for this particular need.”
Melanson said they will also work toward having the care provider travel to the patient and the patient will not be asked to travel to another location.
She said there are more than 300 of these types of exams performed annually at Horizon hospitals.
In Fredericton alone, she noted there have been 63 exams conducted since the beginning of April.
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