The Yukon Employees’ Union (YEU) is calling on the territorial government to make good on its pledge to provide extra support to nurses in Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek during the summer tourist season.

The union and the previous Yukon Party government agreed to a pilot program that would install an extra nurse in each community between May 1 and Sept. 30.

The two communities would share an extra nurse during the rest of the year.

Currently, Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek have one nurse each.

“June is now almost behind us and to date, no nurses have been hired to fill the gaps,” YEU president Steve Geick said in a statement last Thursday.

No extra nurses were assigned to the two communities last summer either, even though the agreement was in place, he said.

The union posted a petition online encouraging the government to live up to the commitment it made in a letter of understanding outlining the pilot program.

“Nurses often work alone in small highway communities where they must be available 24/7 for weeks at a time with no relief,” reads the petition.

“Nurses are routinely exposed to violence and threats on the job, and are more prone to make errors when there is little hope of rest. With no respite, the work is exhausting both physically and mentally.”

The Department of Health and Social Services says it simply hasn’t been able to fill the positions in Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek.

The department has made arrangements for auxiliary-on-call nurses and “float” nurses – permanent nurses who move among communities – to go into Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek when the existing nurses have time off, spokesperson Pat Living said this afternoon.

“We continue to work to get additional staff into those communities over the summer months, depending on available resources. Nurses in those communities will have a second nurse at various times during the summer, but not all summer,” Living said in an email.

There are currently four community nurse vacancies: one each in Carmacks and Ross River, and two for float nursing positions. Three job offers are pending responses, said Living.

Communities are entitled to at least one nurse. In communities with a single nurse, auxiliary-on-call and float nurses step in during weekends off and vacations.

Under the collective agreement, the Yukon government is required to do its best to ensure that community nurses get every third weekend off, said Geick. For the rest of the month, nurses are either in the community health centre or on call.

“Because of the professionalism and dedication of these nurses to their patients and the communities they serve, they show up for work each morning no matter how late into the night they have worked,” Geick said in his statement.

Nurses working in rural Yukon are eligible for three different allowances on top of their salaries, including one worth $4,000 for their first year of working in a community.

The Community Nursing allowance rises each subsequent year to $8,000.

When it comes to hiring nurses for the communities, money isn’t the issue, Geick told the Star this morning.

“It’s the time off. It’s being able to take the time off when you want it,” he said.

“The part that upsets me is that we’ve negotiated something in good faith through collective bargaining,” said Geick. He was referring to the agreement to place two additional nurses in the Alaska Highway communities.

He told the Star this morning that the government hasn’t done enough to advertise these seasonal positions.

Living said the government has been running ads consistently in the Canadian Nurse Association’s magazine for the last year and a half.

In May, Health and Social Services Minister Pauline Frost blamed the previous Yukon Party government for a community nurse recruitment and retention strategy “that hasn’t been very successful.”

The problem of hiring and keeping nurses is not isolated to Destruction Bay and Beaver Ceek, Frost told reporters on May 23.

“It’s across the Yukon,” she said.

“We’re experiencing the same thing in Old Crow, for example. We’re flying in nurses from Ontario. Is that a good use of the taxpayers’ funding in terms of long-term stability? No, it isn’t.”

But Geick said Frost has yet to confront the issue, despite his numerous attempts to talk to her about providing relief for nurses in the communities.

He said the minister didn’t address the nursing situation during a very brief phone conversation about two weeks ago.

A lack of nurses along the Alaska Highway is a danger to everyone who travels that road, whether they’re from the Yukon or are tourists, and to all those who live in nearby communities, said Geick.

“The summertime is when you need the extra help especially on the north highway because you get so much more traffic coming up and down through Alaska.”

Geick is losing hope that the government will find nurses for the two communities before the summer ends.