Dana Chatzitassis works in Environmental Services at Sunnybrook. Every day, Dana’s expertise protects the health and safety of staff, patients and visitors to the hospital’s palliative care unit. She is specially trained in cleaning and disinfection protocols, which are critical in minimizing the risk of infection and spread of viruses, like COVID-19. After being on the front-lines since day one, Dana shares her experiences and how her team is getting through the pressures of the pandemic.
The last few months have been unprecedented
Yes, it’s been a very difficult time, very stressful. As individuals and as a department, we’re hyper vigilant anyway. But now, we’re afraid to let our guard down because there are still cases of COVID-19 circulating and we don’t know who has it. We want to protect everyone here and feel a huge responsibility to keep things contained.
Tell me about the work you do on the palliative unit
Day to day, it’s the standard work that goes on anywhere else in the hospital. As a team, we are always big on cleaning high-touch surfaces, like door handles, the hand sanitizer units and phones. All clinical areas, public areas and office spaces are disinfected on a regular basis. Keeping everything sanitized and contained is a huge responsibility on any day, no matter what type of virus you are dealing with. As cleaners, we basically disinfected every single surface that you can imagine and continue to do so.
Has your work affected how you interact with your family?
I have two kids at home, aged 9 and 14, so it’s been difficult with the home schooling because I’m not always there to help them. My work hours have stayed the same, which I’m grateful for, so I try to do what I can over the phone when problems arise. From an emotional standpoint, I don’t always feel I’ve been there enough to give my kids the support they need. They’ve been scared for me, so we are all just doing our best. If anything positive can come out of this, I’m hoping that seeing us get through this difficult time will make them stronger as people.
The work you do deals with risk during normal circumstances. How has COVID-19 changed things?
Before COVID-19, I was really good at forgetting about work once I left the hospital. I was here during SARS, but even then, things were different. SARS felt more contained. With COVID-19, the virus is more widespread and the way it behaves is totally different. I wasn’t traumatized after working through SARS, but I feel that way now. COVID-19 has thrown a lot of us for a loop and we’re having a harder time bouncing back from this.
Especially in the early weeks of this pandemic, our teams had to react to rapidly changing protocols. Things were literally shifting by the moment, so our team had to become very adaptive with everything we were doing.
From a personal standpoint, I felt a lot of fear when the pandemic was declared and brought that home with me at the end of the workday. I quickly developed a strict routine that I still follow after every shift. I change my shoes at work and put my uniform into a bag before leaving the hospital. When I get home, I’ve trained my kids not to come running for a hug, which is kind of sad but I think many people are doing the same thing. I have a washroom in my basement that I head immediately down to for a shower after dropping my uniform in my laundry room for cleaning. No one touches me until after I get out of that shower. My hair is actually breaking off now because I’ve been washing it so often.
How are you and your team getting personal support?
From the beginning, we were offered supports like counselling to help us through, but I personally didn’t feel that was the right outlet for me. Our unit is tightly knit and we’ve always been there for each other. I joke that we’re like a big happy fighting family! We can talk to each other and support each other because we’re all going through the same thing. These conversations have really sustained us.
Burnout is a real risk now, as we’ve been living with this elevated level of stress for so long. I think it’s important to focus on maintaining “yourself” in whatever way you can. I’m trying to do that with some days off, and spending time outside going for walks and runs. I also try to limit the amount of news I watch. I generally check once a day and then shut it off. Sometimes you have to walk away from the information overload.
All of us I think are much different people than we were going into this. To be honest, we’re all exhausted and we’re sad. We kind of feel like we’ve been through a war, being on the front-lines of this. But that said, we’re also hopeful. We can’t wait for the day that we finally see the other side of all this.
