Hundreds of nursing home beds sit vacant because of staff shortages – CBC
Nearly 400 job vacancies, advocate calls for action
Aug 15, 2022
Nearly 300 nursing home beds in New Brunswick are vacant because the homes don’t have enough employees to take care of more residents.
That’s because there are nearly 400 job vacancies in the sector, hard-hit by the pandemic.
Meanwhile, hundreds of seniors are waiting to be placed in nursing homes; many of them stuck in hospital beds.
That, in turn, limits the number of emergency room patients who can be admitted to hospital — an issue that has raised concerns in recent months after several incidents, including the death of a man waiting for care at Fredericton’s Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital ER, and a man being discharged from the same ER just hours after breaking his neck in a motorcycle crash.
The province has announced new nursing homes and plans to add nine in the coming years, a total of 600 more beds.
