KGH nurses can wait up to nine years before getting parking space

Photo: File Photo

Nurses at Kelowna General Hospital are dealing with massive parking headaches that are impacting patient care, according to the BC Nurses Union.

Union president Christine Sorensen said after canvassing nurses about the issue they found "pretty shocking statements" around access to parking.

“I just got a staff parking pass last week after exactly six years of being on the waitlist,” said one nurse. “A coworker of mine just applied for the parking pass at the end of 2020 and was given an estimate of nine years wait time.”

That nurse was told by Interior Health they are working on January 2015 parking applications right now.

Others nurses are accumulating parking tickets, but Sorensen says it is less about the tickets and more about patient care and the risk to nurses' health. Nurses forced to park off site have dealt with some "scary situations" while walking to and from their vehicles.

“I hate parking off site because I’ve had far too many encounters with scary people yelling at me and/or following me,” one nurse said.

“I complained once to a manager and was told security will escort staff to their cars if they ask - I tried once, and security will only walk you to the edge of the hospital property, so it wasn’t helpful at all. I’ve also been screamed at for parking near houses.”

While all workers at KGH are dealing with parking challenges, nurses, who are 93 per cent female, can be particularly vulnerable. The sporadic shift times also make it hard to carpool.

“Security won't escort you to your car. I was walking to my car after 11 p.m. and had a guy come up to me and put his arm around me and ask me where I was going. I had to elbow him to get him away,” explains a local nurse.

Sorensen said expecting nurses to remove PPE to go deal with parking issues hurts patient care.

Sorensen says KGH is the largest facility in the Interior Health region with anywhere from 900-1,200 nurses working there. According to IH, approximately 800 people are on the waitlist for a parking pass right now.

“That’s just nurses, there are also other health care providers and important members of the health care team that also need parking, so we don’t need to all fight over the same few parking spots," says Sorensen.

IH says they have more than 700 dedicated parking stalls for KGH staff.

“Interior Health continues to explore future options to increase the number of parking stalls at KGH, however the wait for parking can be up to four or five years for a parking pass, depending on a variety of circumstances,” states the health authority.

This month, IH opened 63 additional KGH staff parking spots in a new lot on Speer Street and 11 short-term patient spaces at the Walter Anderson Building lot.

“Given the costs of land and parking development as well as the limited land available for parking near the hospital, there is no simple solution,” says IH.

Sorensen says they’ve brought up the solution of a gated off site parking lot with shuttle services.

“It seems like an easy solution, and I just don’t understand why there’s such resistance in place to try to solve this for the people that are working at KGH,” says Sorensen.