"I feel proud we’ve been able to do our part, so the people giving direct care could safely do theirs."

"I am a step away from completing my Masters degree in Public Health from UVic. I had been working with the Innovation, Planning and Transformation team for my practicum when I landed a new role on the team as coordinator, for special initiatives and projects. COVID-19 has been a ‘special initiative’ like no other.

At the onset of the pandemic, I supported the Planning EOC. The first task was to help coordinate the virtual Town Halls across the region with IMIT. I trained admin assistants to run them at their sites and was around to troubleshoot tech issues. My technical skills skyrocketed out of necessity during COVID-19. I was also seconded to the Infection Prevention and Control team. The knowledge and expertise from this group was awe-inspiring and in high demand. People relied on us for current information on clinical guidelines and best practices.

The challenge was making sure changing information was ratified, documented and in the hands of our clinicians urgently. Collaboration and being systematic with collecting feedback was essential. My role was to work with the director of Infection Prevention and Control to finalize these documents and other practical resources to make sure no details were missed, all stakeholder input was accounted for and to make sure that they were consistent and accessible. We worked with many partners including Patient Education and Communications to make sure finals were relevant, practical and effective to guide our teams to work safely. I redesigned the Infection Prevention and Control Pulse page for COVID-19 to centralize information and make it easy to find. All 151 documents and resources can be found there. I feel proud we’ve been able to do our part, so the people giving direct care could safely do theirs."