Stories

Ashley joined our Patient Family Advisory Partnership in November 2018 following her mother’s admission to D-Wing.
 
While visiting her mom in the family lounge, a few staff members approached her about a hospital renovation project in the space and asked her thoughts on the work underway. Later, one of those staff members returned and asked if she would be interested in joining the Patient Family Advisory Partnership.

When Valerie’s newborn daughter, Adeline, was admitted to our hospital at only two days old the entire family was overwhelmed and panicked.

Over the course of the pandemic, we were deeply touched by the generosity of our community.

Watching or hearing about local businesses showing up at our hospital to deliver food and supplies to our team as they struggled to keep their doors open with provincial restrictions in place demonstrated just the kind of place we work in (and many of us live in).

Heather began volunteering with TeleCheck over ten years ago after learning about the opportunity from a friend, fellow community contributor and program founder, Katherine. 

I was a member of the team that intubated the first two COVID-19 positive patients that required ventilation at our hospital. I remember intubating one patient in our Intensive Care Unit and before I was finished there was a knock on the door with a message that a second patient needed the same intervention immediately in the Emergency Department.

As businesses and organizations across the globe closed their doors our Headwaters Heroes fought night and day to find solutions to keep our doors open and move mountains for our community.

Driving into work down empty highways for days, weeks and months without a break, our team stayed the course because we knew had to. There were people reliant on our care, who simply would not survive if our doors closed, people like Liz.

The necessity of health care does not stop– not even for a pandemic – it only becomes even more essential.

In Wave 1, care providers across the globe needed to think quickly and come up with creative solutions so that patients, families and caregivers had what they needed when they needed it.

With the onset of the third wave of the pandemic, our Headwaters Heroes were called upon once more to step up and support areas in our hospital in critical need.

Our team assembled additional patient beds to accept transfers from other overburdened hospitals in our region and we needed clinical and non-clinical team members to support those spaces.

At the age of 16 Kim began nursing at a Long-Term Care facility in Owen Sound. Her family made the move Orangeville in 1981 and she began working at Fountain View Retirement Home which eventually became Avalon Retirement Lodge.

On March 17, 2020, when COVID-19 was declared an emergency in the Province, our hospital mobilized quickly to ensure that anyone entering our building would be safe and protected. This meant limiting the access points to the hospital as well to two entrances. Screening desks and a whole process to manage the flow of people was set-up.