A critical staffing shortage at the Whitehorse General Hospital has led to low morale and overworked nurses filing more grievances than usual, says the president of the nurses' union.

Michèle Demers, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said nurses are being shuffled between departments to fill gaps created by the staff shortage.

"The morale is low. The number of grievances have increased," Demers said. "There appears to be some leave requests that are denied."

Demers added that the hospital continues to hire nurses on a casual or on-call basis, as well as restricting vacation leave for its nurses this summer: "None of the nurses will be allowed to take more than two weeks off at any time this summer," she said. "That seems to be the directive at this point in time."

The Ottawa-based national institute represents more than 100 nurses at the territorial capital hospital, but it wasn't the first organization to raise alarms recently over problems at Whitehorse General.

Earlier this month, the president of the Yukon Medical Association said the hospital and the Yukon's health-care system overall are facing a crisis due to a lack of long-term care beds for seniors. Dr. Rao Tadepalli said about 30 per cent of beds at the hospital are being occupied by seniors waiting for spots to open at local nursing homes.

Shortly after Tadepalli's comments aired, Health Minister Brad Cathers announced 12 more spots would open at Whitehorse's Copper Ridge long-term care facility to help ease the shortage.

But around the same time, Whitehorse General CEO Michael Aeberhardt said the hospital was down just a few nurses. Yukon Liberal leader Arthur Mitchell said the issues at the hospital should not be brushed aside so easily.

"The president of the [Yukon Medical Association] said publicly [that] Mr. Aeberhart does not have the confidence of the medical profession in making those comments," Arthur said recently in the legislative assembly.

"Now, this is not some faceless person spouting off. This is the president of our medical association. He was and is obviously very concerned," said Mitchell.