All Nurses Required to Follow Orders to Help Control Spread of COVID-19

March 28, 2020
Any nurse who works at more than one worksite MUST fill out online form by 5:00pm, March 29

* LAST UPDATED 13:00, MARCH 29 *

BC's Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has announced two separate orders designed to contain the spread of COVID-19. These are public orders and have not been negotiated by BCNU and the Employer; compliance is mandatory.

The Bridging Order restricts employees from working at more than one long-term care facility (LTC) or between an LTC site and an acute care site, as indicated by each health authority's local medical health officer (MHO). Local MHO orders have not yet been clarified and thus the impact of the Bridging Order is not yet clear. However, nurses who are informed by their Employer that they are being impacted by the bridging order should follow their Employer's direction as to site assignment. There is a plan being developed to provide for a centralized approach to the deployment of al long-term care staff. At this time the health authorities are involved in collecting data to the inform the process.

The Data Collection Order calls for the collection of information required to allocate staff working in LTC facilities, private hospitals, assisted living residences and designated hospitals. All employees who work at more than one worksite are being given the opportunity to register their preference for worksites for the PHO to consider when assigning employees to one worksite.

Please scroll to the bottom of this page to review related frequently asked questions.

To be clear, the Bridging Order only applies to LTC facilities at this time. The Office of the Provincial Health Officer would like to collect data from all nurses working at more than one worksite in case they decide to expand the order to apply to acute and other care settings.

For those of you who work at one worksite, you do not have to do anything.

Action required by employees who work at more than one worksite

For those of you who work at more than one worksite, and one of which is in long-term care, you will soon be assigned to work at only one worksite.

If you work at more than one worksite you must fill this form out. This includes nurses whose main job is in acute but who also work the occasional shift in a LTC facility.

  • You must register your worksite preferences (e.g. first choice, second choice) on the BC Health Staffing website. The deadline to register is 5:00 pm, Sunday, March 29, 2020.
  • The Office of the Provincial Health Officer will only consider the preferences if they are facilities you currently work at.
  • There is no guarantee that you will be assigned to your first choice in worksites. The PHO will consider operational and epidemiological requirements over preferences.
  • If you do not register your worksite preferences, you will be assigned by the Office of the Provincial Health Officer.
  • The Office of the Provincial Health Office intends to notify employees by end of day April 2 of the facility they have been assigned to. You are to continue working scheduled shifts until notified otherwise.

Those members who work more than 1.0 FTE over two sites will have their hours maintained at the single site.

That is, members who are currently working 1.4 FTE total will have their hours increased at the single site to the full FTE they are currently working. Members who work part-time in a job outside of health care will not be compensated for those hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is BC Health Staffing?
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Is this centralized approach permanent?
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Will health authorities and individual sites be involved in allocating staff resources or will it all be coordinated at a provincial level?
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Why is HEABC involved?
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Does the employee worksite preference website apply to all staff? What are the exemptions?
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Are casual employees exempt?
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Could you clarify if this is for physicians as well?
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This means that staff have 48 hours to choose their preferred workplace over the weekend?
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Do the Bridging Order and Data Collection Order and the GIU* apply to organizations that are not members of HEABC?
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How will employees who are not covered by HEABC’s provincial collective agreements be paid?
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There appears to be exemptions, will it be individual basis or profession based? If individual, how do employees apply for them?
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After April 2nd, will there be period of time for departments / employees working multi-sites to transition their schedules?
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Will this be mandated between health authorities or just within each health authority? (i.e. Employee working a VCH site be ineligible to work at a FHA site casually)
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Will I experience a loss in hours or pay if I am assigned to a single site?
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What happens with all pre-booked shifts until June if we are mandated to only one site? And if you cannot re-book those shifts lost because you can no longer work at more than one site how does the difference in pay get made up?
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Is my SIN number secure on the employee selection website?

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