Cassandra Nantais has put her passion for nursing to work since starting her studies at St. Clair College and is a big advocate of an arrangement that has given her a hospital job in her second year.
Nantais is one of 25 nursing and three health services office administration students paid by the College through its work study program to do jobs at Windsor Regional Hospital. As well as giving the students valuable experience, the arrangement is providing support to hospital staff stretched to the limit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Normally, work study students are employed on campus during the school term. That changed in the fall of 2020, when the College and Windsor Regional found a way to allow some of those students to work at the hospital.
“St. Clair College was pleased to be able to create this arrangement to help the hospital, our students and the community,” said Karen Gill-Gore, Associate Vice President for Employment and Training Services.
Nantais, who is in the second year of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, works on a medical-surgical floor at the Ouellette campus of Windsor Regional Hospital for 16 to 24 hours a week. Her tasks as an unregulated health-care provider include restocking protective equipment supplies, assisting nurses, and helping patients with bathing, toileting and eating.
“It’s very different than seeing it in the lab at school,” Nantais said. “I’ve been able to shadow the nurses and see what I will be doing for the rest of my career. I think that’s really cool.”
The first students hired in late 2020 worked remotely and assisted with updating the hospital’s patient information forms, said Karen Riddell, Windsor Regional’s chief operating officer, chief nursing executive and vice-president of critical care and cardiology.
By January, students like Nantais were able to start working in different units at the hospital’s two campuses and in its COVID call centre.
“I think it’s been great,” Riddell said.
Gill-Gore agrees. “It’s been rewarding as a community college to be able to be of assistance to our community, especially in a time of great need,” she said.
The modification to the work study program is just one way the College and hospital have expanded their relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another is the hospital’s hiring of undergraduate nursing and practical nursing students to fill staffing gaps created by surges of COVID-19 patients and new protective measures required by the pandemic.
Those students — referred to as undergraduate nursing employees — started working at the hospital in April 2020, Riddell said. Currently, the hospital has 120 undergraduate nursing employees from the College and University of Windsor. Many of the nurses have been hired permanently after they graduate and register, she said. Several of the College’s respiratory therapy students have also been employed by the hospital.
The hospital and students are benefiting from the unique work study arrangement and hiring of undergraduate nursing employees, Riddell said. “It really broadens their horizons and gives them an opportunity to identify if Windsor Regional is the right place for them from a career perspective. It also helps identify if they’re a good fit for the organization.”
As a work study student, Nantais said she has been mentored by fourth-year nursing students hired by the hospital.
“I really enjoy this position and I would recommend it to all nursing students,” she said. “I hope St. Clair continues with this partnership with Windsor Regional Hospital so more nursing students can have this opportunity.”
Nantais, 20, had to quarantine for two weeks before starting work at the hospital on Jan. 18 because she had been employed as an aide at a long-term care home in Tecumseh since March 2020.
Working in long-term care gave her another valuable perspective on the pandemic. There were no COVID-19 cases among residents at the home while she was there, but she saw how they struggled psychologically with not being able to see loved ones in person.
“It fueled my want to work in health care even more, just because I was the one dealing with them firsthand,” Nantais said. “I’d try to fill that role of visiting with them and maintaining their social interactions, but there’s only so much you can do and I’m not their family. But I tried my best.”