“My team is so invaluable. I feel like it is a pretty tight-knit team. As long as we’re all on the same page, then it feels like it works like a well-oiled machine.
I’ve been an LPN and HEU member for approximately four years in September, and I’m the local chair. Before that, I was an LPN in long-term care in Strathmore, Alberta, which is about half an hour east of Calgary. It wasn’t much different from working in long-term care here.
My duties are kind of a middle management sort of situation, where I do a lot of the medication administration and I direct the care aides with their work. If they run into issues with wounds and temperatures, for example, they’ll come to me with concerns about their residents, and then I will help guide them, and take over if need be.
There are meetings for LPNs to go and get updates on the COVID situation and how that affects us at work. Thankfully, our site has no COVID outbreaks, so we don’t have any residents who are sick, so it’s mostly business as usual. We’re so, so lucky. I cross my fingers and knock on pieces of wood every day.
There are a few more tasks. When we arrive at work, we have to change before we get to our units. And we have to do our temperatures twice a day. We’re doing a little bit more paperwork when it comes to making sure that the residents aren’t being affected. We’re getting a little more phone calls from residents’ families because they aren’t able to come in and visit, so I relay a lot of messages.
We’re told only if residents have fevers and coughs that we are to wear PPE, otherwise it frightens the residents and our risk of COVID exposure is small.
I go home to my parents as I’m their caregiver. So, the scariest part for me is if there’s a COVID case to ever come into my work that I would be taking it home to them. I feel like I would need to stay elsewhere for them. It’s scary.”
- Rhea, Licensed Practical Nurse, part of the health care team