Nurses are the ‘human face of care’
Coronavirus pandemic puts the spotlight on them for the work they’ve been doing for centuries
Scott dePass isn’t your typical nurse.
He’s never worked in a hospital, for one thing.
Until the COVID-19 pandemic struck and he was redeployed temporarily to the office working in case management, he did his work in emergency shelters, soup kitchens or drop-in centres across Niagara.
You might even find him in jail. Resources are limited there. Even telling someone the risks of getting a tattoo can change their life.
DePass is an outreach nurse for Niagara Region Public Health, part of a small team assigned to a big area — three nurses covering Grimsby to the north down to Fort Erie at the southern tip.
One works at safe-consumption sites, where people are dealing with addictions and, sometimes, illnesses such as hepatitis C.
The other two, including dePass, work with a wide range of people — some need basic nursing care but don’t have the ride to get there on their own; others are homeless, living on low income or struggling with mental health issues.
“I see young kids that are needing vaccinations because they’re in a situation where they could be suspended from school,” he says.
“I see families where they’ve been displaced due to family traumas, people who are in a bad situation due to struggles with drugs and alcohol.
“We kind of have a gamut of everybody out in the community looking for services.”
Last week was National Nurses
Week. Most years, it comes and goes with little notice. This year, it feels like every week since mid-March has been nursing week.
Since COVID-19 struck, people have gone to great lengths to show their appreciation to front-line workers who put their own health — and maybe their own life — in jeopardy to provide care.
Suddenly, nurses are the rock stars of the health-care world.
They have been serenaded by parades of police cruisers and fire trucks. People paint signs calling them heroes and place them outside hospitals and nursing homes.
Restaurants have brought them free food, and when they go out some places offer free coffee or front-of-the-line service.
There’s a strong case to be made that nurses are finally getting the recognition they’ve deserved all along.
Across Ontario, 17 per cent of all COVID-19 cases — 3,947 as of Tuesday — involved health-care workers, about one-fifth of them nurses, according to Public Health Ontario.
“It’s just so heartwarming to see the community respond the way they have to all of our health-care workers and frontline workers,” says Derek McNally, executive vice-president clinical services and chief nursing executive for Niagara Health.
“Nurses have talked to me about, you know, the neighbour who left a planter on the doorstep for them. Or somebody that perhaps gave them gift cards to shop … there are so many very nice gestures from neighbours, friends, family and just the general public.”
The roughly 2,100 registered nurses, registered practical nurses and registered nurse practitioners who work in Niagara hospitals look at the same picture of life that dePass does, but from a different angle.
“Staff look after everything from newborn babies to the elderly and end-of-life care and everything in between,” says McNally, who has worked 40 years first as a nurse and then a manager.
“You’re a nurse in a pediatric department, or a nurse in the trauma unit in the emergency department, there are very different stresses in all the jobs that nurses do, for sure.”
In hospital, he says, nurses are the “human face of care.”
“They’re the constant for the patient, and for the patients’ families they’re the communication vehicle between the interdisciplinary team and the family.”
They are the ones, he says, “that are constantly there, by the bedside, around the clock.”
Same picture, different angle: dePass doesn’t mind being reassigned to case management for now but says, “I’m not built to be in an office, I’m built to be out in the community.
“Both of my parents are teachers and I thought, I never want to be a teacher,” he says.
“The ironic part is, I’m an educator in a very different way, but I’m still an educator.”
DePass, 46, has been a nurse for 20 years, spending the first 12 dealing with infectious diseases before moving to community outreach work.
“Being out in the community sounded like it was something quite interesting, and the fact it was kind of a new field meant we could kind of make the role what we needed it to be.”
Now, he says, “I think it’s kind of the way of the future, when you start to see public health is not just a building or just the people in the building — it’s trying to connect with the people in the community.”
So they bring the care to the people.
They do it through health education, vaccinations, testing for sexually transmitted infections, nicotine replacement therapy and healthy baby programs.
Some of the people they see are living rough, or on the street. Others, though, are getting by on low income, many of them in Niagara’s smaller communities where there are fewer resources and getting to one of the bigger centres is difficult without a car.
“Now we try to go where the people need us most, rather than waiting for the people to come and see us,” he says.
“And if we are more accessible and more easily able to be accessed by the community, it’s funny how they actually start to use the services more.”
Most of the people dePass and the other public health outreach nurses see don’t own restaurants, so they can’t bring them free food as thanks. Since some don’t own vehicles, a thank-you parade isn’t going to happen, either.
“We count our wins differently, than like counting off on a list and saying yup, we got this person, this person and this person,” he says.
“Sometimes it’s, well we got this person off drugs for a month as opposed to doing drugs every day. Sometimes it’s that we got them into rehab and they’re actually doing really well.”
He continues: “Even the ones that call out to you on the street — I’m a ginger, so I kind of get picked out in a crowd, but when they can pick you out and they come up and say hi to you … and they have a conversation, and they’re excited to see us …
“It’s the idea that what we’re doing is making a difference, if we can kind of change the lives of people who would otherwise be falling through the cracks.”