Residents of the NWT expecting their first child, as well as expectant parents in Nunavut, will not be able to give birth at Stanton Territorial Hospital until at least April following a recent announcement by the territory’s Health and Social Services Authority (NTHSSA).
On Jan. 26, the NTHSSA announced a “phased resumption” of obstetrics services at the Yellowknife hospital, which were suspended for almost all patients between Dec. 10 and Feb. 21 due to a staffing shortage.
As part of its plan to slowly re-introduce these services to the hospital, residents of the NWT who are expecting at least their second child, as well as those who have planned c-sections, will be able to give birth at the hospital starting Feb. 22. This phase will continue until at least March 31, although it’s unclear what the next phase will be.
In a press conference on Dec. 1, Kim Riles, the NTHSSA’s chief executive officer, said she was confident that in February, the obstetrics unit would be able to “at a minimum, resume whole services” because of the health authority’s recruitment efforts.
The NTHSSA says these criteria, which also exclude expectant parents from Nunavut, were put in place because “generally individuals who have already had a child require fewer pre-labour assessments, have quicker births and have a lower probability of in-labour complications.”
This means that more than one third of expectant mothers who were scheduled to give birth at the hospital during this period - 20 out of 55 - will still have to be transferred to Edmonton.
“While we have been successful in staffing to date we do not have the resources to re-open the unit fully for planned births, especially given that the potential for staff to be impacted by COVID isolation,” the statement reads.
As of Jan. 19, Stanton was operating at a baseline-vacancy rate of 22 per cent for nursing positions, the same rate as it was on Dec. 1, 2021.