Horizon making space at Sackville hospital for Beal nursing classes, which could start in January 2024
Beal University Canada has completed an institutional review with the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission and is now undergoing a programming approval process for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program which it plans to offer partly based out of the Sackville Memorial Hospital (SMH).
Horizon recently published an update on the physical changes happening at the hospital to make room for Beal classrooms. Some services, such as diabetic education and respiratory therapy services, have been moved out of the hospital and into the Tantramar Community Health Centre, a privately-owned building across the parking lot from the hospital. Other services will be relocated within the hospital itself, and Horizon says it has already completed renovations to make the relocations work.
There are still some services in the former Queens Unit of the hospital that will need to be relocated to make way for Beal University, according to the Horizon update.
Horizon emphasized that all services will remain within the Tantramar Community.
You can read the full update from Horizon here.
Beal University Canada president Holly McKnight says if all goes as planned, nursing students will start clinical labs and classes at the SMH in January 2024.
McKnight is hosting a meet and greet for potential new students in Sackville on Monday. She’ll be at the Sackville Visitor Information Centre from 9am to 6pm on July 17, 2023 to answer questions and share information.… Continue
Horizon’s Nancy Parker talks about her role re-building the nursing staff at Sackville Memorial Hospital
“Over the summer there could be gaps, but we’re committed to continue to work very hard with our community and within Horizon to close those gaps.”
That’s Nancy Parker, former Sackville Memorial Hospital nurse and Horizon manager, now tasked with the job of recruiting and retaining nurses at the small hospital which has had drastic service reductions due to a lack of available staff in recent years.
The Sackville hospital emergency department has had staffing issues for years, beginning in the months after a previous Horizon administration announced the permanent shutdown of overnight services at a number of small hospitals through the province. That announcement was almost immediately reversed, but the damage had been done, and nursing vacancies at the Sackville Memorial Hospital started to grow.
Then just over a year ago, Horizon announced a drastic reduction in emergency department hours at Sackville Memorial. And in December, at around the same time that Nancy Parker was hired, Horizon closed acute care beds at the hospital.
The message since then has been that Horizon is working towards re-staffing and re-storing services in the Sackville hospital, and Nancy Parker is part of that plan.
CHMA called up Parker last week to find out more about what she’s doing, and how its going.
Rural Health Action Group calls for immediate action to repair “fundamentally broken” relationship with Horizon, province
The co-chairs of the Memramcook-Tantramar Community Task Force and the Rural Health Action Group are angry, and they’re not playing nice anymore.
In a strongly-worded letter addressed to the premier, Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard, Horizon CEO John Dornan, and other Horizon managers, the group says the relationship with Horizon management and the department of health has been “fundamentally broken” after an announcement on Friday informing them the Sackville Memorial Hospital would be closing its acute care unit.
Read the full letter of response here (pdf).
“We are embarrassed by our efforts to recruit people for jobs you seem to have no plans to actually offer. We are humiliated in the face of increasing numbers of citizens who ‘told us so’ about the government’s disingenuous nature. We believe that you don’t even understand your own Action Plan; it’s folly to think you can do ‘business as usual’ and then expect different results,” states the letter, signed by former Sackville mayors Pat Estabrooks and John Higham, and former councillor Margaret Tusz-King.
The Rural Health Action Group has been mobilizing since the summer, when Horizon announced cuts to ER service at the Sackville hospital, reducing it to 8 hours per day on weekends. That has since been expanded to a full seven days.
The group secured $15,000 in funding from the Town of Sackville to put toward recruitment activities, and has plans to work with the hospital foundation to fundraise further.
Group leaders were meeting with Horizon management, and had been informed that the most recent cuts to ER service were being made in order to maintain staffing levels for acute care.… Continue