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COVID cases are rising this spring. GTA intensive care units are feeling the crunch. When they’re overloaded, patients are sent to other hospitals who have availability. The Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie is one of these hospitals.

“We’ve seen the volume of inpatients here in Barrie ebb and flow as case counts rise in Ontario,” says Pauline Bal, an Rx2019 who joined the team at the Royal Victoria in November 2020. Pauline is one of several alumni that the School of Pharmacy checked in with last year when she was working in a GTA hospital. One year later, she’s still fighting COVID in a hospital setting, though working in the Barrie hospital is quite different.

“We’re a smaller hospital than what you see in the GTA,” she says. “We’re a very close-knit team and have unique specialty areas, like a specialized seniors’ unit.”

Pauline is primarily a stroke and rehab pharmacist who has provided support in several hospital units. “I’ve worked in the internal medicine teams, the specialized seniors’ unit, in-patient surgery and emergency medicine,” she says. “The variety means I’m constantly learning, and while the learning curve has been steep in some cases, the team here is incredibly supportive.”

Her days are a blend of assessing patients, providing therapeutic consulting to physician colleagues, following up on interventions and championing antibiotic stewardship alongside the hospital’s two dedicated antimicrobial stewardship pharmacists.

Though the hospital is smaller – over 320 beds – than what Pauline’s worked in before, it is a core regional center and provides care for many of the surrounding municipalities in the Barrie area. They have also implemented unique measures to respond to COVID.

“The most recent innovation is the Pandemic Response Unit,” Pauline says. “The Pandemic Response Unit provides beds for short stays and helps release pressure on overwhelmed Simcoe Muskoka hospitals.” The new unit is a massive tent in the hospital’s parking lot. It connects to the main hospital through a tunnel (seen below) and has enabled the hospital to continue to provide care while weathering the challenges that come with supporting COVID positive patients.

A year into fighting the pandemic, Pauline is feeling the strain that so many health-care providers feel.

“Staying positive is definitely a challenge,” she says. “I’m lucky to work with such a great team. I’ve only been on this team a short time, and yet I was immediately made to feel welcomed. That’s helped me weather the difficult moments.”

Receiving a COVID-19 vaccination was another silver lining for Pauline. As a frontline health-care worker in a hospital, she received her vaccine early in 2021.

“Getting this vaccine made me feel like I was part of history. We were all standing in line in the freezing cold, and we were just so happy,” she says. “I don’t know if relief is the right word, but I felt like I took a big breath and can start to hope that there’s something better on the horizon.”