ROTHENBURGER – Interior Health ducks, weaves, obfuscates on parking
(Image: Mel Rothenburger)
INTERIOR HEALTH HAS A PROBLEM it doesn’t want to talk about — a shortage of proper parking for Royal Inland Hospital staff.
This might not seem like a big deal unless you’re the one having to walk back to your car in the dark after a long shift.
I received a letter from a nurse who parked in the public parkade due to running a bit late for work. Employees aren’t supposed to do that. After a 12-hour shift, this employee returned to find a blue ticket on the windshield.
“The ticket that means you will have to pay a fine as well as have repercussions with HR. The blue ticket that makes me wonder how far the public’s gratitude (goes) for doing an already hard job under greater distress and danger to nurses and all medical staff.”
The letter goes on to acknowledge that the public gets upset when staffers take up parking spots at the hospital.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
One just needs to walk into the emergency wing for a non-emergency issue. The design of that area is ugly and non functional. The problems at RIH are multiple. I am doing all I can from a diet, exercise and workplace safety point of view to steer away from even going near that place!
Not an answer, but an observation as to how we got here in the first place:
We can blame a long ago previous generation who decided to drop a hospital on a steep hill, immediately in front of a cliff.
Even at that time, there was a large open and flat area behind where the court house is today. Enough room back there to have easily allowed further expansion for generations to come, including multiple parking garages for patients and staff.
What we are discussing today is directly because of this blindness to any potential for future community growth, that would put a hospital on a cliff. There is no viable answer now … except maybe tear down the 1 South and the Alumni tower and the existing staff parking and build large there … but then that’s it, all square footage is used and maximised. It is likely that in our grandchildren’s or great grandchildren’s future, issues like this, and perhaps beds themselves, will again be a problem.
This has been an ongoing problem for over twenty years and everytime they do a reno or major add on they say it will be addressed and all it does is get worse. The footprint for the hospital is to small and will always be a problem because of location. Ste. Annes or Ponderosa will have to be added to the footprint for a large parkade or this problem will never go away for staff, patients and visitors. Everyone knows that but refuses to address it.