Interior Health is working to fill nearly three dozen nurse vacancies in specialized units at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

Health services director Richard Jewitt says the hospital’s emergency room and intensive care unit are short about 15 nurses each.

“For the intensive care unit, most of those positions have now been filled and the staff who will be taking up those positions will be starting in the next few weeks. Unfortunately for the emergency department, we’ve got a bit of a longer road ahead of us. So we still have about 15 vacancies.”

Jewitt says the staff shortage in the ICU has been happening for three to four months, and he says the shortage in the ER is a “bigger issue” that many hospitals are facing in B.C. across Canada.

“Obviously it’s a specialized area, and it (training) takes some time. We are trying to plan out providing our in-house courses, and also obviously recruit externally from other course that are run… But we know there is a general shortage that’s facing emergency departments.”