Nurse focuses on empathetic healthcare during COVID-19
May 12, 2021
May 10 to 16 is National Nursing Week in Canada. To honour some of our frontline heroes, Georgian will be sharing stories of hardworking, courageous nurses all week long.
For most of his life, Sebastian Collins wanted to be a scientist. It wasn’t until he started studying biology and chemistry that he realized he wanted more than writing papers and applying for grants in his future. He wanted an empathic connection with people.
“My wife is a PSW, so I started with that and wanted to keep going so I became a nurse,” he says.
Sebastian completed the Georgian/York Bachelor of Science in Nursing collaborative program in 2019, less than a year before COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on the world. One of the most valuable lessons he was taught was how to maintain a deep connection with his patients.
“Georgian was fantastic for skills and technical aspects, but I think the biggest thing for me was that Georgian had a real focus on caring and empathy, maintaining humanity throughout your care,” he recalls. “I think that has been difficult for some people with COVID-19. All these extra precautions have kind of put a barrier between us and the patient. Georgian’s training has helped me maintain my empathic connection to my patients.”
For Sebastian, who is a Staff Nurse with Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) on the Medical and Surgical floor and COVID-19 unit at the South Muskoka Memorial Site in Bracebridge, the pandemic has given him the opportunity to use these skills to provide comfort to patients who are alone and afraid.
“As long as we’re wearing our proper protection gear, we can still be up close with a patient, using therapeutic touch to help them feel less afraid and to feel like there are still people around,” he says. “For a lot of these people, especially the ones with dementia, they feel alone with not being able to have visitors. So making them feel that they’re not alone, that there’s someone there caring for them, I think, is very important.”
Sebastian was also able to provide input into the creation of COVID-19 policies and procedures at MAHC as they were being developed. Although it is still early in his nursing journey, he already had experience developing COVID-19 health-care protocols as a member of a nursing team in a small community in northern Ontario, called Attawapiskat, during his first year after graduation.
“It was quite an interesting journey,” he recalls. “It’s an amazing and rewarding thing to do.”
He came back to his home in Muskoka after a year to join his wife and was quickly hired by MAHC. And, he continues to fulfil his life’s purpose.
“The most important thing for me is making the world a better place and you can do that in a really direct way when you’re providing that empathic care to people.”
This article was originally published in the spring 2021 edition of GeorgianView, the college’s alumni magazine.