Let's continue our series of meeting staff with Yukon Health and Social Services.
Today we visit Carcross, Yukon, which is now nearing the peak of its fall colours. It's a very beautiful time of year in this scenic lakeside community which is an hour's drive from Whitehorse.
Brook has worked at the Carcross Health Centre for 17 years. The name Carcross is short for Caribou Crossing, which inspired this folk art displayed in town. As a primary health care nurse in charge, her responsibilities include emergency response, acute care, X-rays, vaccinations, lab work and much more. Brook says that forming one-on-one connections is very rewarding. She says her work fosters a real connection with people. Let's meet Brook and learn more about her role with the Government of Yukon.
What makes for a good day at work?
I think one of the really great things is that you never know what is going to happen in your day. Sometimes, an emergency patient walks in that will disrupt our plans or we might be called to an emergency scene in the community. We attend the scene, help somebody in distress, and then return to complete booked appointments like well-child vaccines and you feel like you've made a difference that day.
You must know a lot of people working here. Can you tell me about that?
Yukon’s communities are small, especially when you live and work here long term. I have definitely got to know the bulk of the population. When my kids were little, they always wondered why I seemed to know everyone. Occasionally I get surprised when I come across someone I haven’t met yet.
What would you say to somebody considering a career in Yukon health care?
I think that the Yukon in general is a fabulous place to practice health care. You get to know your patients in a real way. They're not just numbers or strangers. The beauty is that here in a small town like Carcross, we get to build relationships with our patients. You see them throughout their lifespan. You see them as children, graduating high school, becoming parents, grandparents and elders and treating all their health needs along the way. We share in celebrating their successes and supporting them through challenges. And you understand very intimately, when they come in in distress, what all the other factors are that you may need to consider or not when beginning to provide care for them.
Years ago, how did people help you to get up to speed and be part of the team when you started here?
We've had a dynamic team over the years. People come and go as they do. But I was lucky to come into a team that had already been in Carcross for a while at the health center. They already had that deep relationship and the trust of the community. As an initial introduction, we went around visiting people at the First Nations office, at the school, at the daycare, and at elders’ breakfasts. Then becoming part of the community and participating in community events enabled me to sort of step in and continue in their history of providing high-quality health care here.
Your work is a little different than most nurses' across Canada. Can you tell us about that?
In rural Yukon, in our communities, our nurses work in an expanded scope role. So that means we work in a primary care setting. We have booked appointments during regular clinic hours but we also see emergencies whenever they happen. We take turns providing on-call emergency care during evenings and weekends. In the expanded scope we do things like assess and treat patients, take X-rays, dispense medications according to our protocols, order and collect lab specimens, well woman exams, sutures, and certain emergency procedures. We gain a really fantastic skill set that gets us quite prepared to provide health care in rural and remote communities.
How does it feel to take on all of these different kinds of challenges here?
No doubt, practicing in the expanded scope can be a bit daunting for new nurses when they come on. Part of my role as a long-term nurse here is to mentor nurses into this role, into the expanded scope. We'll take nurses who've had a lot of experience working in an emergency or an ICU, and we provide a wholesome, training program and orientation in Whitehorse prior to them even coming to a community.
And then they get paired one-on-one with a mentor, someone like myself, who can work with them on an individualized learning plan to address their learning needs because everybody will come with a different background. Then one-on-one, we'll address those needs as we can. And once you're done and signed off, there's by no means any expectation that you now have experienced anything that the Yukon can throw at you because that's part of the beauty of the Yukon: You never know what's coming, but you have a team. We have a team in Whitehorse that supports our practice. We also have the capacity to call, Whitehorse General Hospital and discuss with the emergency physicians on call for us there what the best care plan would be for that patient.
What do you like about this job?
I like everything, I like that it's so different. I like that there's something keeping me on my toes every day. We’re always learning. And for me it gives me a really high level of job satisfaction.
