Moving to a more patient-centric model of care means Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare needs to hire more personal support workers.
About 30 more are needed by November when the post-acute care hospital moves to a Team-Based Care model.
"As part of a strategy for many hospitals in North America to deal with some of the burnt-out impacts they're feeling on healthcare workers, more and more institutions are going to start looking at team-based models," said CEO Bill Marra.
Burnout in healthcare is not new. It was a problem before COVID-19, but Marra said the pandemic brought the issue into sharp focus as nurses, already stretched to the limit, had to take on even more work. As a result, many nurses are reconsidering their professional futures.
The new model at HDGH will take some of the work off the shoulders of nurses and allow them to do what they do best, which is lead. Personal support workers will, in turn, do what they do best, which is provide the hands-on care patients need.
"They're going to be the team leaders," said Marra explaining the new role of nurses, and personal support workers will provide "assistance to eat, mobilization issues, getting a shower."
Considering patients stay longer at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare than at other hospitals, the facility provides an ideal environment to test out patient-centric care.
Marra hopes it will also give the nursing profession the much-needed relief it deserves.
"This will certainly go a long way in improving our ability to recruit, and more importantly, retain staff in all of the disciplines," he said.