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Pharmacists working in Newfoundland and Labrador hospitals say a staffing crisis is pushing them to a breaking point, and that the provincial government needs to take it seriously.
“We are desperately short staffed, and being stretched way too thin. And it’s been going on for way too long, and it’s very unsustainable,” Megan Munden, a pharmacist at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s since 2016, told reporters Wednesday. “I think burnout is going around probably every single day.”
About 80 people participated in a rally outside the Health Sciences Centre on Wednesday.
Hospital pharmacy differs from community pharmacies in the sense that they focus on specialized and collaborative care as part of patient and family care teams in Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as helping create patient plans in a variety of care aspects inside the hospital.
Lorie Carter, who has worked with Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services since 2012, said that while pharmacists play that key role in care, a staffing crunch is pulling them away from that work — which can ultimately bring impacts to patient care.
“If we’re not on the patient floor where patients are, and where we provide benefit, then when we are pulled away from that, then that benefit is not happening,” she said.
The head of the union representing the pharmacists said staffing at its current level can’t continue. Alliance of Allied Health Professionals president Gordon Piercey told reporters hospital pharmacist vacancies have passed 20 per cent across the system, and that Clarenville’s hospital pharmacy is only 25 per cent staffed.
While he says Premier Tony Wakeham and the provincial government have heard their concerns, a pay raise to reflect the challenges around recruitment and retention can’t come soon enough.
“This can’t wait for weeks [and] months. We need to hang on to all those pharmacists that are still here and still employed today, and we can’t lose anymore. And if anything, we need new talent to join, especially in some of those rural hospitals,” Piercey said.
CBC News has reached out to N.L. Health Services for comment but has yet to hear back.
Piercey said pay is a key piece driving pharmacists away from working in hospitals, noting hospital pharmacists in Newfoundland and Labrador face among the lowest pay in Atlantic Canada.
Carter has seen that impact first hand, questioning how the province can attract new pharmacists with such low pay.
“They could walk down the street and make $20 an hour more,” Carter said, referring to work at corporate community pharmacies. “People know that our pay is not where it needs to be.”
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