Meet Deb, Tsartlip’s Community Health Nurse. Read her introduction interview below.
Can you tell us a bit about who you are and where you’re from?
My name is Deb. I’ve been a nurse for eight or nine years now. I’m originally from Ontario but I am married to an active military member, so we’ve moved all around Canada. So now I say I’m from all over.
Right now, I’m calling Esquimalt my home and hoping to stay here for a while, because we do love it here. I have two little ones, I’ve got a four year old little girl and a one year old little boy, they keep me nice and busy.
And then in my position here, I’ve really found it to be a breath of fresh air, I’ve found the community very welcoming, and a very different job than I’ve done. Hospital work is kind of my background. So, it’s refreshing and exciting to be in a community environment and get a different feel for how people manage their health issues at home versus in the hospital.
What experience and expertise do you bring to the table?
Because I have lived all over Canada, I have done a variety of different things. So I was previously an ICU nurse and an ER nurse, so I’m very comfortable with disease management and just understanding treatment. And then I also was actually doing some nursing for the military where I was vaccinating the military population, so I’m also quite comfortable with my knowledge in vaccinations and what I would recommend. And then I’ve also done home care experience, so I’m quite comfortable in assessing people in their homes and trying to help people manage their diseases in home. So I’ve kind of done a wide variety of things, which has really helped honestly build my foundation to be able to do what I do really anywhere in any environment.
What’s your title and what are you up to at Tsartlip?
I am one of the community health nurses, there’s two of us here. And then our kind of our goals here at Tsartlip are, there’s two different kinds of sections that we do. So one would be like, the prevention of diseases, and promotion of health. So things like vaccinations, blood pressure clinics, TB tests, things like that would kind of fall under the preventing disease, promoting health. And then the other part of that is what we call Community Health, which is where we’re doing home visits. We’re helping people with their illnesses and their disease management. So we’re doing a lot of chronic disease management with people. So if you have diabetes, COPD, high blood pressure, those are all things we help with, in just either providing support and knowing how to better management or maybe if you’re going through a little bit of a crisis with that we try to help point you in the right direction, and working with the doctors as well. Whether it’s your own primary care provider, or out of Tsawout, we work with them as well to kind of help arrange your care.
What do you do when you’re not at work?
Oh, I try to keep up with my little ones. Yeah, as people say you’re in the thick of it when you’ve got little kids. So I feel like I’m in the thick of it. So I do a lot with my little ones just playing, chasing them, I do actually enjoy the challenge of working out. So I do a lot of like, kind of competitive gym stuff as well in my very little spare time that I have. I usually get up at 5:30 in the morning to do that. And then I also have a two year old dog that is a nut, so he also requires a lot of attention. So between all that, I’m chasing kids, that’s what I’m doing.
Was there anything else you wanted to mention?
I hope people know that we are very open to meeting you. I love it when people come up and introduce themselves. I try to do my best to get out there and introduce myself as well. You’ll see me driving around and be like, who is that person and, or you’ll see me out and about, please feel free to say hi. And if you’ve got questions, or concerns, we’re always around to help out however we can.
