Community care: Let's meet a community health nurse in Watson Lake, Yukon

Watson Lake Community Hospital is a hub of the community.? But medical care isn’t only offered there.

Community health nurses in Watson Lake visit schools, they meet Elders and seniors in the community and they work in partnership with many groups to offer education, immunization, parental support and more.

“I really enjoy the relationships that I get to have with people. I get to know them over time,” says Erin who works in this role.

Let’s meet Erin learn about her work in Watson Lake with the Government of Yukon.

Could you introduce yourself and what you do in Watson Lake?

I'm Erin and I'm a community health nurse. I'm the nurse in charge in Watson Lake. The health centre in Watson Lake is a small team. There's three of us here.

So, we have two registered nurses and then an administrative assistant and we work together here in the community.

Other health centres in the Yukon are staffed by primary health care nurses. What’s the role of a community health nurse?

I think that’s a good question! There's actually not a huge amount of community health nurses in the territory and the role is different. Here in Watson Lake we have the hospital that delivers the acute care. This is why we at the health centre are not primary health care nurses like you would see in other health centres. Instead, community health nurses work with a public-health focus. We do maternal child pieces, we do health promotion pieces, communicable disease pieces and of course: We do a lot of immunization.

We do school health...a large amount of things! Just in a different way.

You work outside the hospital or clinical setting. Could you tell us about that?

Yes our role has a large community focus. We get to work collaboratively with other health -service providers and community-based organizations. On a typical day, I might be visiting our local seniors’ society to do a lunch-and-learn.

Or I might go into the high school for our drop-in ?or to our local family centre to partner with them on a topic to provide health education.

What do you like about working as a community health nurse?

Having done acute care and now working in this setting, I really enjoy the relationships that I get to have with people. I get to know people over time and build relationships. So for instance, like, I might get to know a family while they're pregnant and teach them their pre-natal classes. Then I’ll give the grandparents their immunizations so that they're well protected when the baby comes.

Then I see them then all through their postpartum and well child visit. So it's neat to get to know people in a different way. It's very relational. I do feel like you get to have great conversations and get to know people really well. You get the feeling that you're getting to contribute to your community in a positive way.

What’s unique about working in Watson Lake?

This will seem like a little thing, but the parking! (laughter) Seriously I used to pay a lot of money to park at a hospital.

Here I can just walk or park outside the hospital and clinic free of charge. It’s such a small thing but it’s nice.

Also there are opportunities to try different things within nursing here. Elsewhere in Canada, a nurse who works in a public-health setting might need to pick their expertise and really work only in that area. So they might work in early childhood, or immunizations or communicable disease.

Here I get to do all those things while being part of a unique and really great community.

What advice might you give to somebody considering this career?

I say go for it! I think it's really worth exploring. It's worth seeing the diversity in nursing practice and the diversity in the way health care is delivered in different places, and get the benefit of exploring a new place with really rich history and culture.

Nursing in the Yukon is very different than nursing I've done anywhere else.

I think you get to see really neat and unique things living in the Yukon. And it's really special to be part of a community. Watson Lake is small but I live here permanently, it is home for me. And I think that's really something special – to be working here and being part of the community where I'm delivering health care.

?

Thanks to Erin for taking part in our series meeting people who work in Yukon health care!

Find a healthy workplace with the Government of Yukon's department of Health and Social Services.

Visit yukon.ca/employment to see job listings.

You can also learn more at yukoncareerpaths.ca