Leading the Way Through Crisis
Worrying about the wellbeing of friends and family during the COVID-19 pandemic can take its toll—but imagine being personally invested in the health and safety of thousands of patients. That’s the reality for Ontario’s family physicians.
Family doctors have been maintaining their practices, overcoming pressing challenges, and meeting new patient needs: from undertaking testing and championing vaccination programs, to organizing virtual visits and delivering in-person care everywhere, including in long-term care homes and homeless shelters.
Through leadership, creativity, communication, and compassion, family physicians have emerged as what some consider one of “the miracles” of this pandemic. Here are some of their stories.
A comprehensive strategy for community care
During flu season, Dr. Erin Bearss and her team in Toronto acted to combat the pandemic and help protect the people of Ontario by establishing, coordinating, and staffing the Sinai Health COVID Assessment Centre (CAC).
The CAC provides a safe space for people with COVID-19 symptoms to quickly be tested. And because not everyone can make the trip over to the CAC’s location, outreach swabbing is a main priority. The team goes to great lengths to bring COVID-19 tests directly to people living in long-term care and group homes.
It doesn’t stop there. The team maintained physically distanced venues for COVID-19 vaccination, established under the threat of flu season exacerbating the pandemic. Through their proactive work, approximately 1,000 locals were vaccinated during the winter months, and vaccinations continue seven days a week.
A steady eye on structural vulnerabilities
COVID-19 hasn’t been the only public health emergency in Canada—and numerous other countries—over the past year. The global opioid crisis, for instance, is ongoing, and family doctors across Ontario have had their hands full dealing with a viral pandemic and an overdose epidemic at the same time.
For Dr. Angela Wong, preventable opioid-related deaths are top of mind. While she makes sure to keep her family practice accessible to patients at South Riverdale Community Health Centre in east-end Toronto, she is also deeply concerned about the preventable opioid-related deaths that result when society’s most vulnerable are cut off from primary care.
Despite moving many primary care appointments to online platforms, a top priority for Dr. Wong and her team has been maintaining in-person Consumption Treatment Services. She has helped ensure the doors stay open throughout the pandemic and has run food security programs, offering daily takeaway meals for those in need.
Championing culturally safe spaces for vaccination
Ottawa Public Health has been working closely with Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health and Akausivik Inuit Family Health Team to offer vaccinations to First Nations, Inuit and Métis community members in Ottawa. Since starting to offer vaccines in the middle of February, they have provided first doses to more than 14,000 people.
Dr. Sarah Funnell, a First Nations family physician and public health specialist in Ottawa, helped promote these vaccination clinics operated by primary care providers as culturally safe spaces where Indigenous community members could receive the vaccine. Given high demand, the vaccine clinic was relocated to a municipal recreation centre to accommodate more Indigenous clients.
Dr. Funnell is encouraged by this move to a larger venue because compared to the general public, Indigenous peoples “are most at risk of poor outcomes such as hospitalization and death and serious health consequences” if they contract COVID-19.
She says that making Indigenous communities a high priority benefits everyone. “If we’re able to immunize those that are most at risk of getting sick … we’ll have a better chance of decreasing the overall transmission and will be a bit closer to getting back to what our new normal will be.”
Channeling personal loss for public good
In March 2021, when Mississauga’s Dr. Sohal Goyal joined Peel Region’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts, he says the acceleration of Ontario’s mass inoculation in primary care left him “giddy” with excitement. He had already been vaccinating residents in long-term care, as part of a team with public health.
Family doctors are a mainstay of vaccination, delivering a large share of flu shots in their clinics every season. “This is what we do as family doctors,” he notes. “We’re excited to finally be able to contribute. And hopefully, this will mean that all family doctors will be given the opportunity across the province.”
Integrating new vaccination duties into already busy practices brings added challenges, and Dr. Goyal, who lost his father to COVID-19 complications in January, spent hours every night preparing to deliver his first batch of shots. For him, though, the extra effort was more than worthwhile: “Each of these needles could potentially save a life.”
source: Adina Bresge The Canadian Press, Mar 13, 2021
Sparking needed change
Throughout the pandemic, Toronto’s Dr. Naheed Dosani is front and centre as a national expert advocating for equitable healthcare.
A palliative care physician and health justice activist, he is sadly not surprised by who has been bearing the brunt of the outbreak. Dr. Dosani sees firsthand the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on low-income, racialized and homeless populations – all communities that had been experiencing inequities in our society before the pandemic hit.
“The pandemic hasn’t only highlighted the inequities in these communities, it has also perpetuated them,” explains Dr. Dosani, medical director of Peel Region’s COVID-19 Isolation and Homeless Program.
When he is not providing care on the frontlines, Dr. Dosani uses Twitter, Instagram and TikTok to advocate for paid sick days, better conditions in long-term care homes, an equitable vaccine rollout, and anti-racism in healthcare.
Through an engaged social media following, Dr. Dosani sparks dialogue and change by sharing credible information about the pandemic and its impact on people who experience structural vulnerabilities.
Communication and collaboration
Dr. Allan Grill, Chief of Family Medicine at Markham Stouffville Hospital, has taken the role of family doctors as educators to a new level during the pandemic.
Dr. Grill, who leads a clinical practice in Markham, is using Twitter to share expertise and information with all Ontarians.
In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Grill’s Twitter posts have become a de facto news feed on vaccines, connecting people with opportunities to get their shot and serving as a needed rallying space that spotlights his fellow doctors’ vaccination work and accomplishments to uplift and amplify their efforts.
In his own words: “Vaccinating is at the core of what we do, along with educating, advocating, communicating & collaborating – key roles during a pandemic.”
Learn more about the work Ontario family physicians are doing to keep their patients and communities safe throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.