Making magic in the midst of chaos
Truro registered nurse provides leadership through a challenging year
TRURO, N.S. — It’s what great leaders do.
Ask them a question about themselves and their accomplishments, and, invariably, you get an answer that contains the words: ‘we,’ ‘us,’ or ‘team.’ Maybe all three.
Registered nurse Tammy Parker, clinical practice leader for the emergency department at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre, falls into the 'great leader' category.
“I keep reminding the staff everyday and I know it sounds sappy and their eyes all kind of glaze over, but they’re the reason I come to work, I walk through these doors, why I want to be here. Because what they do, in the midst of all the chaos, is magic,” Parker said, when asked to recall the challenges and tragic circumstances of 2020.
“We see it as defeat when the wait times are long and when you can’t find the proper bed, or when the system is drained, demand exceeding the resources, but everyone down here makes it work,” Parker said. “It might take a bit longer, but they just do it. They don’t see it because they’re in the midst and feel like it’s nothing, but they’re creating magic and helping someone.”
In looking back on the year, Parker said the talk in January around the issue of overcrowding was a carry-over from 2019.
“We started 2020 with severe overcrowding in the emergency department; that was our biggest challenge and it’s always tough,” she said, noting it can be hard for people to appreciate because they can’t see the activity going on behind the doors and curtains, or the ambulances waiting to offload patients.
It wasn’t long before conversations began to centre on COVID-19.
“Everyone who worked down here in this department, through the whole building really, our biggest fear was overcrowding, now mixed with this new, uncertain pandemic, facing us,” Parker said. “Then we had our numbers drop because everything was shutdown, which was great. We were able to learn, keep up with the pace and stay with it.”
But like most in her field, Parker has learned victories can be fleeting and knew the next challenge would be returning from the shutdown, and just at a point when many learned to work within the new rules and restrictions.
“So, reopening and reintroducing and overcrowding mixed with the pandemic piece,” she said, about a stage most in the province saw positively, as getting back to some level of normalcy.
“Then you kind of saw that piece shift back into gear. Now as we’re heading into the next round (of COVID), what I see is uncertainty in staffing,” she said, noting the toll of dealing with rapid changes.
And in the midst of the pandemic last spring, central Nova Scotia communities, from Portapique to Enfield, were rocked with a shooting rampage. The Truro-based hospital right in the middle of tragedy.
“It’s at our hearts, it’s there with us,” Parker said. “Anyone who worked here went through it; it’s part of us now and how you move forward with that is really tough. It hurts and it’s hard to talk about. It’s part of something we did and did together, but it’s always going to be a sadness in our practice as we move forward.”
Parker said dealing with what they have, and really what all Nova Scotians have in 2020, is a display of resiliency.
“It’s definitely shown the strength of Nova Scotia but what I’ve realized is that it is OK for us not to be OK right now. It’s OK I might come to work and feel a little defeated today because of what we faced in the past, so I’m going to rely on my team to get me through those kinds of days, as they should rely on us (team leaders), and I think the community sees that we’re there to do that for them.”
In talking about Parker, Northern Zone COVID response manager Raj Makkar prefaced his remarks by saying all health-care staff have been “amazing.”
“Tammy is in a leadership role and has been able to encourage others and bring that positivity when it was really needed,” Makkar said. “It’s not only because she has been here a number of years, but that positivity she brings to work everyday is very infectious. Again, not that others don’t bring it, they definitely do, but she just seems to have that consistency. It was really needed in those challenging times and continues to be needed every day.”