The Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital ER has reached a turning point coming into the new year.
Like many other ER’s in rural Nova Scotia, the ER at Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital in Lunenburg spent many of its days last year closed due to physician shortages.
But going into the new year, Alex Achenbach, Health Services Manager & Site Lead for Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital, says they’ve put great effort into keeping the ER open as much as possible, which included hiring new physicians and nurses.
Its been very effective. Since January 1st, we’ve been open for all of our shifts, covering our usual hours of 7:30 to 10:30 at night.
The ER now has two new doctors cover shifts along with at least 2-3 nurses per shift to keep the emergency room open.
He says the past closures always weighed heavily on staff, some of which would volunteer for shifts at other nearby hospitals to help with backlogged ERs.
It’s good having that coverage, and nobody likes being closed. The staff we have here really cares for this community and live in it. So when we would close, nurses we did have here would volunteer at other nearby hospitals to help serve the people who couldn’t be seen here.
The ER was also the recent recipient of $51,000 in funds raised for a new Portable Ultrasound machine.
