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Physicians try to keep nurses

Doctors in southeastern British Columbia are so concerned that the region's main hub for trauma patients will be severely crippled by cutbacks to operating room nursing staff that they've decided to pay out of their own pockets to keep the positions.

Doctors in southeastern British Columbia are so concerned that the region's main hub for trauma patients will be severely crippled by cutbacks to operating room nursing staff that they've decided to pay out of their own pockets to keep the positions.

Surgeons and doctors at the Kootenay-Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail will pay to keep two nurses -- originally from Edmonton and Winnipeg -- to continue working full time so doctors aren't forced to cut their hours in the operating room by up to a 25%, said Dr. Ian Grant, an anesthesiologist at the hospital. Figures have not been released.

They have been fighting for months to keep the nurses working full time.

Without the doctors' offer, the two experienced nurses would be forced to work on a part-time basis, meaning a wage cut that would likely force them to leave the region, Grant said Thursday. He said the move is unprecedented.

"I've never heard of it. Never. As far as I know it's a first," said Grant. "We have reached that level of frustration."

The Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital medical advisory committee is also upset with the cuts, unanimously passing a non-confidence motion last month in the Interior Health Authority -- the governing body for health care in the region -- over its fiscal management of the hospital.

Dr. Cheryl Hume, the medical committee's vice-president, said losing the operating room nurses would have a domino effect on the hospital, which serves about 80,000 people. After the nurses, the anesthesiologists would likely go -- driven away by a cut in pay due to fewer hours in the operating room, she argued.

Losing skilled staff at the hospital could put the area in a medical crisis, she said.

Hume said the mountainous terrain around the hospital makes airlifting patients who are in critical condition to better-equipped hospitals impossible at times.

"We absolutely must function as a regional hospital, otherwise, people will not receive urgent, critical care.

I'm referring to important things like newborn babies needing to be incubated and resuscitated to emergency trauma victims," she said.

Frank Marino, the health service administrator for Trail and Castlegar, defended the cuts, saying every region of the province is being forced by the B.C. government to save money.