Faces of the Fight: Jayne Leibel, Communicator
By Jayne Leibel, Community Engagement and Communications
No one thinks of me as a front-line worker. They see me as more of a support staff person who really doesn’t understand the burden that the front-line workers have taken during the pandemic. But that could not be further from the truth. As a Communications Consultant and a Registered Medical First Responder, I’ve been on the front-line of the fight against COVID-19 since day one.
Like many people, you may wonder how communications could be patient-facing. While we don’t stand in front of a patient every day, we do interact with patients hundreds of times a week. Whether it is via our social media channels, the SHA website, text messages and phone calls, the information my colleagues and I distribute every day affects lives. Every social media or website post, public service announcement or news release, articles or interviews, graphics and stickers - if you’ve seen or read it, Communications has helped get it to you. The sheer volume of work and ever-changing information on COVID and our health system response needing to be shared with the public and our staff, and pushing that out seven days a week through the day and late into the evenings for more than 15 months has taken a toll on myself and my teammates. I’m tired.
But that’s not where my story stops. I’m also a registered Medical First Responder which means that when a 911 call comes in the Silton, Craven and Lumsden areas, I’m dispatched to provide medical care while EMS makes their way to the call. I never used to question going on a call because there were very few calls that I would ever feel unsafe on. Now, every call makes me feel unsafe. While I’m trained in putting on and taking off my Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), I don’t do it often enough and doubt creeps in. I worry constantly about a potential PPE breach or missing something on the ever-changing patient screening protocols. And here, I also get to also live and learn from the very information my team helps put out. When a call comes in now, I do a risk assessment and there are a number of calls I have deemed just too risky to respond to and that makes me feel guilty and sad.
Just like you, I’m hopeful that vaccine delivery and uptake will get us to a spot where life can return to normal. I need normal again so I can turn off my phone at the end of a regular work day and get back to travelling and seeing family and friends.
We need your help, because we want normal too.
Get your vaccine, not once, but twice (just like me) and please, please, please continue to follow the public health measures.
We are not back to normal yet and it will be a lot longer before we are if we get complacent now. #Finishthefight