With our hospitals filling up with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients and anti-vaxxers staging protests outside, a group of North Shore moms are showing health-care workers a little love.
Kristin Auger and friend Jabeen Boga launched a campaign to boost front-line worker morale, which has plummeted in the fourth wave of the pandemic. Many of those workers are friends of Auger's, in Lions Gate Hospital.
“One of my good friends have told me that they had added another cry room for the nurses because they were so overwhelmed and understaffed, and just devastated by the ongoing problems of the pandemic,” she said. “That just really touched me. I thought nobody should have a cry room at their work.”
She ran some ideas by a physician friend who told her what would be appreciated most is just a note of thanks. Auger took to social media and community groups to find volunteers eager to raise spirits.
“We ended up getting hundreds of responses,” she said.
The group collected about 160 cards, letters, children’s drawings and treats. They co-ordinated with the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation to deliver them at an outdoor luncheon for hospital staff put on by the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation to boost flagging spirits. One of the moms even came dressed as Supergirl to hand out care packages.
The response was palpable, Auger said.
“I got a text from someone that I know at the nurse's station, saying that she teared up at the nurses' board, looking at all the cards,” she said. “People are starting to feel a little hopeless because this is going on and on, and I think it's just important to realize that you can do small things to make massive impacts on the lives of these workers who are showing up for us every day.”
The group plans to expand to schools, and deliver cards to Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals.
As of Sept. 16, the there were 291 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in B.C., the highest at any point since the third wave was cresting in May. In the previous two weeks, the province reported 81 per cent of hospitalized patients had not been vaccinated.
While cards and letters are nice, the biggest thing people could do to support health-care workers is make sure that they and everyone around them is vaccinated, Auger said.
“If people got vaccinated, the nurses wouldn't need cry rooms. There wouldn't be the stress on the system that's at the heart of all of this,” she said. “Like, just get vaccinated.”
