About 41 nurses, aides and therapists will lose their jobs when Alberta Health Services closes the transition unit in Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital at the end of February.

The transition unit was opened in late 2010 to accommodate patients waiting to move into long-term care facilities and was heralded as a measure for freeing up acute care space and shortening emergency room wait times.

Mike Conroy, senior vice-president for the AHS Edmonton Zone, said the unit was always intended to be a short-term measure until more continuing and acute care beds were created.

“This was temporary capacity until we had other capacity available and that capacity is now available,” he said.

Conroy said that the affected workers are not being laid-off.

“'Laid-off' is a collective agreement term,” he said. “They will be redeployed because we need their skills in other areas.”

Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, said the workers are devastated.

“The fact this unit is closing, they feel, is detrimentally going to affect health care at least at the Royal Alex and in the Edmonton area,” he said.

Smith believes the entire seniors’ care system is in crisis at a time when the population is aging.