A ‘responsibility’ to help Retired Winnipeg nurse, 69, has been volunteering for more than six months on pandemic frontlines By: Danielle Da Silva Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 30, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/09/2020 (1584 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Well into her retirement after nearly four decades of working in public health, Susan Care is back on the frontlines to support the province’s COVID-19 pandemic response.

Since March, the 69-year-old grandmother from St. Vital has volunteered with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority in a handful of roles at health-care facilities in the south end of the city.

In September, the retired public health nurse began volunteering at the Pembina Highway COVID-19 community screening location, greeting the hundreds of people coming by each day in search of a test and supporting the nurses and staff in keeping the clinic running smoothly.

“For myself, I feel that health care is my interest,” Care said in a phone interview with the Free Press. “It’s in my family — my husband is a nurse as well and my son and daughter-in-law work in health care — so I feel it’s like part of me.

“And if I can give something that will help to keep people safe, and help get through this pandemic, then I will do what I can.”

Care’s nursing career stretches back to 1972 when she graduated from the Winnipeg General Hospital School of Nursing and began working at St. Boniface Hospital. In 1990, she transitioned into public health, focusing on maternal health and communicable disease investigation and follow up, until her retirement in 2011.

“I absolutely loved public health,” she said. “I loved working with people, I liked the way we managed our caseloads and there was a lot of variety and diversity in the job.”

“For myself, I feel that health care is my interest. It’s in my family– my husband is a nurse as well and my son and daughter-in-law work in health care — so I feel it’s like part of me.” — Susan Care, volunteer and retired public health nurse

Patients in Winnipeg continued to benefit from Care’s dedication to the job not long after hanging up her stethoscope as she took on casual work and volunteering for her former employer with a breastfeeding support group in Fort Garry.

After the WRHA cancelled the support group when Manitoba’s first case of COVID-19 was reported on March 12, Care was immediately offered a volunteer position at Access Fort Garry to screen people coming in for nasal swabs in the earliest days of the pandemic.

Care said she didn’t hesitate to tell her volunteer co-ordinator to count on her and felt confident in the plans in place to protect her health.

“I did feel a responsibility, and I still do,” she said of working through the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was very sad that the breastfeeding support group was closing down because I really enjoyed going there, and I enjoyed the people and I enjoyed helping, and so when this came up I thought ‘OK, I’ve got another opportunity to help,’” Care said.

In the months that followed, Care conducted temperature and COVID-19 screening for employees and patients, washing gowns and cleaning eye protection worn by staff, sanitizing bathrooms and examination rooms, and the “little jobs that needed doing,” she said.

When the testing site on Pembina opened, Care offered to relocate as she “wanted more work to do.”

Depending on the day, Care might be tasked with sanitizing and restocking examination rooms, or she might be the first friendly face people meet at the test site, providing reassurance to patients, or collecting phone numbers from those who will wait their turn at home or in their car.

“You know, I remember when I was a public health nurse and we had the H1N1 pandemic (in 2009), and it’s not the same by any means, but I was part of having to work all those clinics where we had long lineups of people — people and children being immunized — and we really relied on those volunteers who helped us. We needed that,” she said.

“So that was in my mind as well: how important it is to be a volunteer.”

Care says her family has been supportive of the volunteer time she’s putting in, though the heightened risk has meant postponed and less frequent visits with her grandchild and her 89-year-old mom. She’s also added extra precautions to her daily routine.

“I would have done that anyway, but of course (COVID-19) was foremost on my mind, too,” Care said. “And now, I think about it. I won’t say I don’t think about it because I do, but I try to be very careful in what I’m doing, and I wear a mask every time when I go out now.”

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca