The CEO of Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare believes a lot of good can be taken from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Many of us are not in the head space to be thinking about what comes after and what did we get that was good from the pandemic," says Janice Kaffer. "But there are some things that were learned and some things that will turn out to be good."
Kaffer has been part of the hospital's emergency teams sent to the Village at St. Clair in Windsor and Augustine Villas in Kingsville as the long-term care homes battled COVID-19 outbreaks.
She is calling the experience "transformational" not only for herself, but for health care as a whole.
Kaffer says, when the pandemic is over, there are a lot of questions to be answered.
"I spoke with one of the members of the Augustine Villas team who has already gone in her head to thinking about what can our services and the way in which we work with vulnerable people look different post pandemic?," says Kaffer. "What have we learned as an organization, as a team that can inform a better way forward?"
She's hoping healing can begin soon.
"I think, in many ways, we're focused on actually living through the pandemic, but many of us have already started thinking about how do we start the process of healing, recovery and moving to a new understanding of what health care needs to be after this is all over," she says.
The Hotel-Dieu Grace team has phased out its physical presence at the Village at St. Clair, but does remain on site at Augustine Villas.