Volume 7 • 2020 • Issue 6

Working at anLTCFacility DuringCOVID-19 At the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in May, McGill University reached out to its students in health care specialties to find volunteers who could help in long-term care (LTC) homes, known as CHSLDs in Quebec. Dr. Natalie Pollock, president of the Federation of Canadian Dentistry Student Associations (FCDSA) in 2019–20 and recent graduate from McGill, was one of the respondents. “I was just about to finish writing my final exams at that point, so I knew that I had a lot of free time coming up. I also wanted to stay in Montreal for a little while, before moving back home to BC. It was the perfect way for me to be contributing something.” Shortly after the first announcement, McGill extended the invitation to all students to participate and give whatever time they could. LTC facilities have been severely hit by the novel coronavirus outbreak in Canada, especially in Quebec and Ontario. In response to the crisis, the Quebec government launched an intensive recruitment program to meet the immediate needs of many short-staffed seniors’ residences. Dr. Pollock volunteered in a CHSLD in East Montreal, along with other students and professionals. “At first, it was almost a relief to go there and have co-workers again. Social isolation can make you feel like you lost your purpose.” Dr. Pollock was hired at the CHSLD to help the orderlies in any capacity. “I was assisting residents with various daily activities, such as routine personal care, eating and laundry,” she explains. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the facility established a colour code for the floors—red, yellow or green. “When I first got there, all the floors were either red or yellow. The red floors were for the residents who had tested positive, and the yellow ones for people who had recovered from COVID-19 or who had contracted the disease before, but hadn’t received a negative test yet,” explains Dr. Pollock. “It was very intense. At the beginning, I was working on a red floor every day.” In Quebec, many frontline health care workers reported a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). Dr. Pollock said that by the time she started working at the CHSLD, there was enough PPE for the staff and residents. However, she pointed out how infection control procedures were evolving on a daily basis. “It was confusing for the staff, because what you were trained to do one day was no longer applicable 29 Issue 6 | 2020 |