Three nurses, three perspectives
A LOOK AT THE PROFESSION THROUGH THE LENS OF NURSES AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF THEIR CAREERS
VAWN HIMMELSBACH SPECIAL TO THE STAR Long before the world was aware of COVID-19, 2020 was designated the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife by the World Health Organization (WHO), meant to recognize the contributions that nurses make, as well as the risks associated with nursing shortages.
Those contributions — and those risks — have become front and centre during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurses and healthcare workers have been thrown into the spotlight. And they’re being recognized in ways they didn’t expect, like nightly cheering and pot-banging from the porches, balconies and windows of Canadians sheltering in place.
We take a look at the profession through the lens of three nurses at different stages of their careers.
NEW TO NURSING
“As a new nurse, you feel like a new nurse — you’re the new kid on the block,” says Sandy Willett, who graduated from the nursing program at Conestoga College in 2018. “But during this COVID crisis it almost seemed like overnight you became the person everyone went to, so you instantly became a role model or mentor. I had to step up my game.”
While it’s her second career, Willett is still new to the nursing profession, although it’s always been in her blood. After university, she travelled to Asia and took various teaching positions, mainly in South Korea. She didn’t realize it then, but her overseas teaching experience would be invaluable in her role as a nurse, particularly during a global pandemic.
When she eventually returned to Canada, she found work with a non-profit, helping people with work injuries and developmental challenges. Now she’s pursuing her passion for nursing at The Village at University Gates in Waterloo, which features a long-term care home and the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging.
Even as a new nurse, Willett was tasked with a lot of responsibility, but that has increased exponentially since the onset of COVID-19. “I think it’s changed [my role] 100 per cent,” she says.
That’s where the soft skills she developed during her time teaching abroad have come to the fore, like advocating for clients, the workplace and the profession itself — such as making sure staff had proper personal protective equipment (PPE) from the very start, even before protocols were formalized by healthcare authorities.
It has also meant spending a lot more time with residents — and their families. She now spends large swaths of her day talking with family members over the phone and setting up Facetime calls between residents and their loved ones. While she’s putting in longer hours, she has no intention of cutting back.
“That’s where I’m needed, that’s where I’m helpful and useful,” she says. “Nurses have passion for compassion. This came into play for me especially during the COVID crisis because I realized how much I care for the role that I have.”
MID-CAREER NURSING
Linda Vu is proud to be a nurse, “and what better way than in this challenging time,” she says. Vu, who lives in Ottawa, has worked as a nurse for more than seven years, primarily in management roles. But she’s found a higher calling during COVID-19. “I’ve taken on this role because of the call to serve.”
That role involves working with COVIDpositive patients in Toronto’s recovery site for people experiencing homelessness and refugees in the shelter system. The site is run by local healthcare providers with help from international aid group Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
“My team and I help the homeless and refugees diagnosed with COVID,” says Vu. These populations are particularly vulnerable to the virus, due to crowding in shelters and restricted access to services.
Vu likes to say that nursing chose her. “It was a calling — I’m the one who’s really grateful.” She’s a first-generation immigrant; her family came to Canada as refugees in 1992 when she was six years old, without speaking a word of English and with nothing to their name. At that time, they were placed in a shelter before eventually getting on their feet and moving to Mississauga.
“Now being able to help [people in a similar situation] by using nonverbal cues and the language of humanity, that drives my passion,” says Vu, who went from refugee to graduate of McMaster University, eventually working in both hospitals and long-term care homes.
Her work at the recovery site is particularly rewarding, though each day is unpredictable — and tough. “It varies and it’s challenging — you’re spending a lot of time doing proper PPE and infection control and realizing anything could happen,” she says. “I’m using all of my nursing critical skills.”
“I am proud to be a nurse,” says Vu, “and to give back to the community who have helped my family when we immigrated to Canada.”
RETIRED — BUT STILL A NURSE
Anne McKenzie ‘technically’ retired from nursing in 2016, but though she left the nursing profession, nursing hasn’t left her.
She’s a former community nurse who spent several years working for St. Elizabeth Health Care; she also served as a council and committee member for the College of Nurses of Ontario and was past president and vice-president of the Registered Practical Nurses of Ontario (RPNAO).
When McKenzie retired, she moved to the family cottage near Algonquin Park — but for two years kept working part-time in a nearby retirement home. She still goes in on Friday afternoons.
Over the years, she’s seen how nursing has changed — for better or worse. She graduated in 1973 from the Department of Health’s RNA program; at the time, there were “all kinds of nursing jobs” and she was offered a full-time position within a day of looking for a job.
“My passion was to care for people and make a difference in the lives of the people around me,” says McKenzie. But in the ’80s, the practice started to change, and she held three part-time jobs — in hospital, community and long-term care — just to make ends meet. Just like some nurses are doing now, she points out.
In the 1990s McKenzie became the first full-time registered practical nurse (RPN) in Grey and Wellington County, where she found her true calling with community nursing. But the profession changed yet again the late ’90s when the competitive healthcare market gained a foothold.
Public healthcare funding deteriorated and contracts got worse for nurses, and “in that process the quality of care changed,” she says. “It became fee-for-visit, which I called production-line nursing.” That’s when she got involved with the College of Nurses of Ontario, taking a leadership role to maintain the “true art of nursing.” Even back then, there were supply issues with PPE like gloves and masks.
McKenzie hopes the COVID-19 pandemic will finally bring these issues to light and result in positive — and permanent — changes in Canadian healthcare and the nursing profession, from dealing with the lack of PPE to reconsidering how we manage long-term care facilities.
Though she’s retired, McKenzie never once considered not working her Friday shifts. “I’m a senior citizen and I’m going to work on Fridays to care for senior citizens,” says the 67-year-old. “I still have the drive to make a difference [and] I think it’s more important now than ever.”
McKenzie describes her nursing career as a journey. It wasn’t always easy, but it was also her foundation. “It grounded me throughout my life,” she says. “Nursing has been a gift to me.”
During the COVID crisis ...I realized how much I care for the role that I have. –SandyWillett