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A health care provider helps a colleague fasten their gown. Both are wearing caps, masks and face shields.
March 11, 2021

COVID reflections: A message of gratitude

portrait of Rob MacIsaacBy Rob MacIsaac, President and CEO

As we reflect on the one year passage of time since the declaration from the World Health Organization of the pandemic — which has really turned our lives upside down for the past year — I think it’s important to reflect on three things.

Important impact

First of all, it’s extraordinary what the team at Hamilton Health Sciences has accomplished over the course of the past year. From setting up assessment and testing centers to vaccine clinics, to an unbelievable acceleration of virtual care, to our involvement in long-term care in retirement homes across the city and one hundred other things that have been accomplished, it’s very clear that Hamilton Health Sciences has made an unbelievably important impact in terms of this pandemic response. Our teams continue to provide exemplary care in emergency departments, our intensive care units, and of course our COVID units as well as all the ongoing patient care that has had to be adjusted because of the pandemic.

I think that’s something all of us can take a lot of pride in. When our community needed us the most, we were there for them.

Extraordinary sacrifice

The other thing to reflect on is that for all that we’ve achieved, it has come at a price. We’ve all sacrificed and exerted an extraordinary amount of effort over the past year, and it’s come at a cost for all of us. I think it’s important for all of us to acknowledge that, to be aware of it, and to remember to be good to ourselves, to be kind to ourselves.

As we look forward to better days with the vaccine starting to really roll out, it will take time for all of us to come out of this, to make ourselves whole again, and it will require some deliberate efforts.

Be good to yourself

I would just encourage everybody on the team to think about that and to be good to yourself in order for us all to recover well from what has been an extraordinary year.

I’ll just end by expressing profound gratitude from everybody on the leadership team at Hamilton Health Sciences. And from me personally, my personal gratitude for the wonderful, extraordinary, amazing things that everybody has done over this past year to get through this most difficult situation.

Thank you everybody.