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View from the Front Lines of a COVID-19 Outbreak
The crisis reached its worst that Thursday morning—about a
week after the outbreak came to light. Two of the residents were strug-
gling for their lives. We were endeavouring to provide the supportive
care they deserved. Two residents had already died after being trans-
ferred to hospital. Four others had been admitted. I had no idea when
one of the other 34 residents could take a turn for the worse. We had
more COVID-19 positive cases in our building than most Ontario hos-
pitals were caring for at that time—and we had two nurses on duty.
From the start, we had daily calls with the Vice-President of
Markham Stouffville Hospital. They were tremendously helpful in
ensuring we had adequate supplies of PPE. They made hospital food
services available to deliver purées and other meals for residents
because PHM had lost their kitchen staff.
That Thursday morning, the daily call with the hospital was a
cry for help. I described our situation as a war zone. Perhaps that was
a bit dramatic. But we felt fragile. If the families wanted them to be
cared for at home, we were prepared to offer palliative care for resi-
dents who might not survive. But it wasn’t right to do so without the
people in place to make it possible.
We decided to transfer both Helen and Stuart to the hospital. It
was the most compassionate option. With sadness, I watched the reac-
tion of one long-time staff member as the paramedics rolled each gur-
ney out the doors. She couldn’t say a proper goodbye. She had cared
for one of those two residents for over thirty years. They were her
family. Would she see them again? Would the hospital staff under-
stand the best way to feed and comfort them?
The look of heartache in the eyes of that health worker is etched
in my mind, along with the faces of all six residents of PHM who
died. My grief is small compared to that of their families and the
long-time caregivers. It’s a special person who works for decades in
a place like PHM. The nurses and PSWs who make this care possible
don’t do it because it pays well. It doesn’t. They do it because they
are people of compassion. They immerse themselves in the vulner-
abilities of humanity. Dutch writer and theologian Henri Nouwen,
who served at L’Arche Daybreak community near Toronto, describes
it this way:
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places
of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish.
Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Title
- VULNERABLE
- Subtitle
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Authors
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Publisher
- Ottawa Press
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Size
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Pages
- 648
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- International