UNA concerned short staffing is impacting wait times and patient care in Cold Lake

United Nurses of Alberta members at the Cold Lake Healthcare Centre are raising the alarm about chronic understaffing and its impact on safe patient care. 

Recently the hospital lost experienced Emergency Department staff at the same time as summer visitors to the community placed additional demands on the department, leading to significant overtime and shifts going unfilled. 

Seven experienced Registered Nurses recently left the facility or decreased their hours of work because of the staffing level and patient care concerns. This is nearly a 50-per-cent reduction in available RN staffing. Nurse vacancies are also unusually high at the site. 

“We’ve seen experienced people who are residents of Cold Lake leave to work in other communities,” said Sam Dracek, president of Local 76.

Nurses are concerned that the increase in wait times in the Emergency Department will mean residents of Cold Lake and surrounding areas can no longer access the level of care they deserve. “This has been getting worse since January and has been particularly severe this summer,” Dracek said.

UNA members at the Cold Lake Healthcare Centre filed 29 Professional Responsibility Concern (PRC) reports so far this year. This is a dramatic and troubling increase from the five reports filed during the same period in 2025. PRCs are a mechanism included in UNA collective agreements for nurses to raise and resolve concerns related to patient safety and care, including unsafe workloads, staffing shortages and related issues.

More than a dozen UNA members from the facility met with UNA management and staff on July 29 to discuss their concerns about the chronic understaffing at the hospital in the northeast Alberta community. Shortages of nursing staff are a consistent problem at the worksite, impacting patient safety in the Emergency Department, say Registered Nurses represented by UNA. 

Nurses learned this week that there will be additional funding for acute care and the Operating Room at the hospital — a decision nurses welcome but said will not address the serious short staffing in the Emergency Department. 

The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees has expressed similar concerns about the staffing situation at Cold Lake and other health care worksites.
UNA is calling on Alberta Health Services to immediately:

1.  Prioritize respect for and retention of experienced nurses working in the Emergency Department.
2.  Reevaluate staffing levels and recent staffing mix changes to reflect the health care teams that are needed to provide the patient care possible at the Cold Lake Healthcare Centre.