“I was very scared to go,” she says. “You don’t know what to expect.”

The MHU was erected in one of the parking lots at Sunnybrook’s Bayview campus during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic to help ease pressures on the health-care system. It is 2,088 square metres and resembles a military field hospital.

Barbara says she was a little scared about continuing her COVID-19 recovery in a field hospital, but her fears were short-lived. From the moment she got in the ambulance, she started to feel more at ease.

Barbara’s arrival at the Mobile Health Unit on April 26, 2021.

“The ambulance guys were great; they made me very comfortable,” she says. “They brought me over to Sunnybrook, and it was a great experience. Everyone was … very inviting.”

Barbara says she joked with family and friends that she felt as though she was on the set of the movie E.T., or the TV show M.A.S.H., but the setting didn’t impact the care she received: she says her care team was attentive and upbeat, keeping her spirits up while she was in the MHU.

And Barbara’s condition did improve. The care provided by doctors, nurses and other members of the interprofessional team, such as physiotherapists, helped Barbara regain her strength and improve her oxygen levels.

But what really stands out to Barbara from her time in the MHU is how her care team went out of their way to make her comfortable.

For example, while Barbara was in the MHU she had hot flashes. Without ice available, her nurses had to find another solution to help her cool down.

“They took water in water bottles and froze it,” she says. “The nurses were really resourceful and came up with something for me.”

There was even a welcome package with some personal care items, a word search and a colouring book. Barbara says she was a little skeptical of the colouring book and word search at first, but they actually helped her feel a little better.

“When I started doing the word search and the colouring, I calmed down to a point where I could breathe normally,” she says, adding she has continued the colouring at home because it has been so calming for her.

Doris Ho, a registered nurse who has worked for Sunnybrook since 2016, says those kinds of gestures can make patients more comfortable, especially in a unique setting.

“It’s just getting creative with your resources,” she says. “That’s one way for us to try and make it better.”

The quality of patient care is a testament to the team of people working in the MHU, Doris says.

“The team’s been really good. Everyone’s so helpful,” she says. “It’s a team effort.”

And, to Barbara, the teamwork and commitment to patient care were evident.

“They did a great job,” she says. “Their job is so important to what’s going on in the world right now, and they’re the bravest people I know.”

Barbara is home now and while she still battling some symptoms, she continues to improve. And she’s grateful for her care team at Sunnybrook and the role they played in her COVID-19 recovery process.

“I thank them for taking care of me and just keeping my spirits uplifted,” she says. “I just really appreciate them helping me to get better.”

With a recovering health-care system, operations within the Mobile Health Unit winded down over the Victoria Day weekend and no patients are currently in the unit. The facility will be maintained for the foreseeable future, and should the need arise, MHU teams will be mobilized.

The post Meet Barbara: The first patient cared for in Sunnybrook’s Mobile Health Unit appeared first on Your Health Matters.

People may not associate speech-language pathologists with COVID-19 recovery, but these health care professionals have a critical role with COVID patients, from the ICU to acute care to rehab, and three of Sunnybrook’s speech-language pathologists shared how they support COVID patient recovery and why their role is so important.

Speech and swallow therapists

Nabil Jabbour is a speech-language pathologist at Sunnybrook who works with ICU patients and he says he and his colleagues are really “speech and swallow therapists,” so when COVID-19 patients who have been on ventilators for a prolonged period of time, or on high-flow oxygen experience dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, it’s speech-language pathologists who provide assessment and treatment to help these patients transition from tube feeding to eating and drinking by mouth.

“These patients have had no airflow through the throat for a long time and have not used their muscle to swallow, so their muscle … becomes weak,” says Nabil. “Not only that, but the vocal cords get weak, the voice is hoarse, there is swelling in the throat, reduced sensation, etc.”

It can take a lot of time and therapy for patients to regain the ability to swallow, especially if there are other health conditions present.

“The recovery is hard,” says Zubeen Dharshi, a speech-language pathologist who works in acute and transitional care at Sunnybrook’s Bayview and Holland Centre campuses. She says COVID patients are more complex, and if there is an underlying condition such as MS or Parkinsons, “their deficits, such as muscle weakness or incoordination, get amplified even more.”

Communication skills post-COVID

At St. John’s Rehab, speech-language pathologist Stephanie Durocher-LeBlanc works with patients who are well enough to have been discharged from the hospital, but could still use support in their recovery. Sometimes she’ll continue swallowing therapy, but Stephanie also sees patients who are having trouble recovering their communication skills after being ill with COVID-19.

“They’re foggy, they have delirium, they’re just not as quick, not as sharp,” she says. And since the onset of the pandemic, the demographic of her patients has trended younger, in the 30-50 age range, which means these are people who need to return to full and busy lives.

“It’s not enough that they can functionally get by,” Stephanie says. “They have to run their kids’ lives over Zoom and do their own job; it’s not good enough to be foggy all day.”

She helps patients with their “cognitive communication” by practicing everyday tasks such as setting up a schedule or a calendar, or reading a map and plotting out directions to a location.

“[They’re] literally practicing skills they should be able to do much easier, and it just takes them longer,” Stephanie says. “You kind of retrain their brain to do it at a better speed, a better rate and with more confidence.”

Speech-language pathology is key to COVID recovery

Nabil, Zubeen and Stephanie all say their caseloads have become more challenging during the pandemic, either with more patients, or sicker patients with more complex care needs, or both. And while they may not be first to mind when thinking of a COVID patient’s care team, their role is critical to recovery.

“Without speech pathology these patients will not be able to eat,” says Nabil. “It’s that simple. We are the ones who assess the swallowing and get people off the feeding tubes most of the time and get them back to what they enjoy the most, which is eating and drinking.”

And that, in addition to the work of helping people regain communication skills, has highlighted for Stephanie how necessary this work is.

“I have come to realize just how imperative speech pathologists really are to our patients and to COVID recovery.”

The post The role of speech language pathology in COVID-19 recovery appeared first on Your Health Matters.