More nurses needed before ICU at Prince County Hospital can reopen, Health P.E.I. says

Health P.E.I. says it is "absolutely committed" to getting the intensive-care unit at Prince County Hospital in Summerside back to at least full capacity.

The health authority's CEO, Melanie Fraser, said the first step is to create an eight-bed intermediate-care unit forpatients who fallbetween general and ICU admission over the next six to nine months.

"From there, then that really is a platform to open up the ICU again," she said. "There'll be a range and a spectrum of what that ICU looks like on any given day."

The eight-bed ICU at Prince County Hospital has been closed since May 2023 due to a lack of specialized staff. It has been operating as a four-bed progressive-care unit, with flexibility for eight beds. More serious intensive-care cases have beenhandled at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown since that time.

Fraser said P.E.I., being a small island that lacks the backup health-care infrastructure of largercentres,needs two functioning ICUs.

"You can have a hurricane blow the roof off of something, you can have a fire, you can have an extraordinary shortage of staff for a variety of reasons," she said.

"Being able to have that redundancy in the system, especially for critical care, is extremely important."

Critical-care nursing continues to be our challenge. Health P.E.I. CEO Melanie Fraser

Recruitment has been going well, Fraser said. Four internal medicine doctors have been hired, with hopes for a fifth.

Health P.E.I. hasalso hired five nurses for Prince County Hospital, but needs to attract more.

"Critical-care nursing continues to be our challenge," Fraser said.

When appropriate staffing levels are in place, the hospital can transition back to having an ICU and hopefully expand to 10 beds, she said.

Fraser was reluctant to put a timeline on when she expects that to happen, but saidit will remain a priority.

"We are absolutely committed to getting the ICU back to full capacity and beyond."