Team of Toronto doctors and nurses fill in for personal support staff at nursing homes hit by COVID-19 outbreak
In her day job, Dr. Kathryn Tinckam is a transplant kidney specialist and director of the University Health Network's laboratory medicine program.
On Saturday, she volunteered to work a 12-hour shift as a personal support worker, feeding, bathing and toileting residents in Sherbourne Place, a downtown Toronto nursing home on lockdown with a COVID-19 outbreak that has left it struggling to find staff.
Tinckam is one of 100 doctors, nurses and psychiatrists from UHN who agreed to pick up front-line shifts at the Rekai Centres' two nursing homes after hospital CEO Dr. Kevin Smith asked staff to help.
Smith offered his physicians and nurses to Rekai Centres on Wednesday, after Premier Doug Ford promised hospital "SWAT teams" to help the staff crisis in long-term care.
Ford's announcement came after a public outcry over the crisis of COVID-19 infections and deaths in long-term care. At least 933 residents and 530 staff have tested positive for the virus. Many workers were too afraid to show up for their shifts, or sick with COVID-19 themselves or worried about infecting children or aging parents.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Long-Term Care said Sarnia's Blue Water Health is also helping local nursing homes with COVID testing.
When Smith's email arrived, Tinckam signed up for the Saturday day shift, starting at 7 a.m., saying she was "put in the hands of very capable charge nurses" who handed out tasks, with directions to clean or bring meals to residents. She wears a surgical mask, a face shield, gown and gloves.
"Very soon after that, the breakfasts trays arrived," Tinckam said. "That's when we really started meeting the patients, you got to deliver their meals, introduce yourself, find out a little bit about them, if they are able to communicate with you.
"It's really clear that the staff here know each individual resident, they know their preferences and those are very important pieces of information that allow us to parachute in and do some of these tasks," she said.
"It's a matter of being very present and alert to each patient's need and completing the tasks as every patient might require them."
Last Wednesday, the day of Ford's announcement, was like every other day for the last three weeks or so, at Rekai Centres. CEO Sue Graham-Nutter and her managers were struggling to fill the staffing schedule as front-line workers stopped coming to work.
One of her managers spent four days calling 1,000 former nursing interns, asking for help. Seven are now working in Sherbourne Place or, Rekai's other home, Wellesley Central Place.
"I understand why people are afraid, why they don't want to come in," Graham-Nutter said.
On Wednesday afternoon, an email arrived from the CEO of UHN. Smith asked Graham-Nutter if he could call her that evening. When they spoke, he offered to send leading doctors, infection control experts, psychiatrists and psychological support services for staff who, Graham-Nutter said, are traumatized by the pandemic.
"The virus is not kind," she said.
Smith's offer felt like he had wrapped Rekai's homes in a "giant bear hug," she said. They started working out the details. As her remaining staff struggled, working 16-hour shifts, Graham-Nutter said she couldn't tell them until the plan was finalized. "I kept saying, 'Help is on the way.'"
On Friday and Saturday, when Smith, the CEO and Dr. Brian Hodges, UHN's chief medical officer, walked the hallways of Sherbourne Place, Graham-Nutter said staff recognized that reinforcements were coming.
"I really hope that all hospitals will help long-term care homes - it's making such a difference," she said.
"I'm sitting here on the main floor at Sherbourne. On the floors above me, there is a nephrologist, (kidney specialist) there is an organ transplant nurse, there is a psychiatrist, there are RNs - and they are all working as PSWs (personal support workers)."
Graham-Nutter said details are still being worked out on how long UHN will offer its staff but said she expects it will continue for some time. "This isn't a one-day photo-op," she said.
Mornings now begin with an 8 a.m. huddle between Rekai managers and UHN staff, she said.
They quickly work through a long list of daily needs, a "bucket list," she said. At the top of that list is personal protection equipment, called PPE. The hospital is sending additional supplies, she said. It also sent a mobile shower so UHN staff can potentially wash off the virus before returning to their homes.
The hospital sent an infectious disease expert to train staff on the importance of carefully "doffing" or removing PPE, to avoid infection. Graham-Nutter said the doctor recommended the addition of large garbage pails outside every resident's door, for old PPE, to limit the potential for spread, and is returning next week for education sessions for union reps on staff.
"Before this, people kept asking, how is your PPE supply? I'd say, 'Do you realize that we have to have the people to wear the PPE?'" she said.
"Now, we have real, on the ground support."
Moira Welsh is a Toronto-based investigative reporter. Follow her on Twitter: @moirawelsh