Alumni Highlight

Earlier this year the Nursing Alumni Committee invited alumni to tell their stories about COVID. Below are three of the stories that were shared.

I have been impressed by my students’ desire to be part of a new era of HCA learning and progressing in these pandemic times. Not one of them gave up their clinical placements and my new group also shows great excitement to enter this new field. As well I admire the staff who work at this facility who day in and day out show up for their residents even in the face of no vaccines. You can see their love and care for the residents. It brings tears to my eyes to see their strength, courage and determination to carry on in times that are uncertain and could put them at risk as well as their loved ones. Each one follows the proper work procedures that makes a difference! Now with a vaccine we can breathe a bit easier than before. Much love to those on the front lines each day and much admiration for our health care heroes.

Sandy Khun
BSN 1998
Health Care Assistants Lab and Clinical Instructor
and Contact Notifier for BC Centre for Disease Control

At the beginning of the Pandemic I was working in the OR and PACU. Our team was already working short due to chronic staffing issues as well as we did not have a manager and our CPL went on maternity leave early in the summer. Process and PPE requirements seemed to be changing almost daily at times as new information was disseminated and our nursing team really pulled together to provide the best care possible for our patients in the safest way we could. We were fortunate to have had few to no cases in our community up until the fall/beginning of winter. Since January, however, there has been a marked increase in cases in Prince Rupert. OR staff were directly affected and exposed by other staff who came to work when ill as well as patients who had screened “green” for COVID-19 per the BCCDC surgical screening tool, but who later turned out to have been positive. Through it all, the OR team has shown tremendous resilience and I am honoured to have worked with them. Despite a recent move to a new position in Oncology, I still consider myself a part of the OR team and am proud to be so.

Lauren Payne
BSN 2009
Front line RN – Oncology

In November of last year I was redeployed to support contact tracing efforts for COVID-19. It was very challenging work that really enforced Dr Bonnie Henry’s messaging that ‘we are all living our own pandemic’. I spoke to people who were very grateful, I spoke to people who were very angry and I spoke to so many people who were each in a different situation. I’ll never forget one call I had where the person I was informing to isolate was very distraught. They were completing their final practicum of their education program to become a teacher. The two-week isolation as a close contact to a case made it so that they would miss the last two weeks of their practicum and have to repeat the term. This student did not have the finances to repeat the term and was in tears over the phone. While my role was to review their isolation dates, clarify the meaning of isolation and ensure they seek medical attention if needed, I found myself on the SFU Student Services website trying to help this student navigate the process to find support for their specific context. I can only hope that the program was compassionate enough to find another way to support this student to complete their practicum and find adequate support through the Student Services department.

Mark Sutherland
BSN 2009
Policy Analyst, Provincial Health Services Authority