Province to fund 320 hospital security officers
Prince George Canada October 30 2022
The provincial government has unveiled plans it hopes will help protect health care workers against workplace violence.
The project, announced earlier this week, will see up to 320 in-house protection services officers hired.
“There are just horrible examples across the province. We’ve seen that escalate over time,” said Prince George-Valemount MLA and BC Liberal opposition health critic Shirley Bond, in welcoming the news.
“So, it is long overdue that there is a coordinated and system-wide approach to making sure nurses feel safe in their place of employment.”
However, only select hospitals throughout the province were chosen for the new officers and only three of the 35 would be in the Northern Health Authority – the University Hospital of Northern BC in Prince George, Mills Memorial in Terrace, and the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital.
That is worrisome to Bond, who visited Fort St. John earlier in the year and heard the working conditions described first-hand by health care professionals.
“It is a concern when we see significant hospitals, like the one in Fort St. John, and across the province are not going to have the benefit of this kind of protection in those hospitals. Those are the kinds of questions we will be asking.”
“Words are one thing, action is what matters. So, we’ll be monitoring very carefully how this rolls out across the province.”
In making the announcement Monday, B.C. health minister Adrian Dix said an additional $2 million is being added to the already $8.5 million set aside over three years since 2019 toward the newly-formed group, Switch BC, an acronym for Safety, Well-being, Innovation, Training and Collaboration in Healthcare.
