By Dale Bass, Kamloops This Week

Facilities like Hillside Centre are still essential to mental-health care — but more needs to be done to ensure the safety of staff, said Terry Lake.

The health minister for the province said the psychiatric centre just south of Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops has “a very tough population” of patients with extreme mental-health issues — and the potential for violent incidents.

It’s why there will now be a security guard presence, out of uniform but at the site, round-the-clock after another nurse was attacked by a patient in the centre.

Lake said his ministry, along with the B.C. Nurses’ Union (BCNU) and the province’s health authorities, will be taking a hard look at the care model of psychiatric facilities to determine if they continue to fit the type of care needed in today’s society.

Speaking alongside Lake to reporters at the centre Friday, BCNU president Gayle Duteil said she was pleased with the decision because it’s essential for all nursing staff to be able to go to work, provide care and go home without having to be concerned for their safety.

She said another area to be looked at will be staffing levels in the facilities. In the past, the BCNU has raised concerns about the number of staff working at Hillside.

The nursing contingent is predominantly women.

The ministry and nurses union recently attended a health-care symposium that led to an agreement to look at four psychiatric facilities in B.C. to identify ways to reduce violence.

Hillside is one of the four chosen and, Lake said, the goal is to get that program started quickly.

“The review into this incident will support this action plan. The plan will be complete and made public by early summer,” he said.

Explaining the need for facilities like Hillside, Lake said one need only look to the U.S. to see how its prison system has “become a mental-health system.”

However, he added, helping the patients regain their health and “getting them to a better place is extremely difficult.”

Duteil said the nurse attacked last week was treated at RIH and is home recovering.

WorkSafeBC and Interior Health Authority are conducting investigations into the incident.

Hillside has had ongoing issues with violence toward nursing staff.

In 2013, for example, there were 64 incidents at the 44-bed facility.

Last December, one nurse was attacked twice in a week.