IV nursing teams eliminated from three local hospitals

LOWER MAINLAND (NEWS1130) – If you need an IV at BC’s three big hospitals, the specialty nursing team that used to do it is no more. The union is concerned this could affect more than than just intravenous treatments by shorting staff numbers.

Burnaby General, Royal Columbian and Surrey Memorial Hospital have IV teams, but only for a few more weeks. Fraser Health has decided to disband them.

“The rationale Fraser Health is giving is because of the volume. They say the teams can’t keep up,” explains Janice Buchanan, Vice President of the BC Nurses’ Union.

“It’s really hard for me and many others of the nurses to think that the solution is to disband these teams and download this work onto nurses on the floor,” says Buchanan.

“At the end of the day, there will be a net loss of nurses because they are not hiring any more nurses; they’re deleting these positions,” she notes, adding she thinks the change in service will be noticed.

“For nurses that don’t start IVs on a regular basis, it’s a skill that if you don’t use it all the time, you don’t stay proficient at it. For most patients, it’s very trying to have IV starts and if you have a nurse that doesn’t do them all the time, it’s not good for patients.”

Buchanan says the teams will be gone from the three hospitals starting in September. She claims the Fraser Health Authority promised to do more training for nurses and IVs, but none of that has happened and the deadline is approaching quickly.

Roy Thorpe-Dorward with the Health Authority confirms there are 8.5 positions being eliminated but thinks this new system will be more effective. “Instead of having these specialized IV services delivered by a small team, we’re training a larger pool of RNs to perform this care for patients. This is the same way it’s managed at other Fraser Health sites.”

He says that training has, in fact, started with nurses who are getting it were notified in June.