Helping Ontario’s frontline health care workers in their time of need

To address this issue, industries and companies across the province are stepping up in a big way at this crucial time to provide supplies of PPE for Ontario’s health care heroes as they lead the fight against COVID-19. The cumulative effect of donations across Ontario mean physicians, nurses and emergency room personnel can continue to do their important jobs with confidence.

For OPG’s part, the company is donating one million surgical masks, 75,000 N95 masks, and 17,500 Tyvek protective suits which will be distributed by Ontario’s Ministry of Health to hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities in most need. This supply, which was part of OPG’s inventory for its own workers and pre-purchased as part of the company’s emergency preparedness plan, has been deemed to exceed the company’s current needs. OPG will continue to maintain a healthy reserve for its critical workers.

For Nikkel, seeing the province come together in the spirit of giving to help its health care workers in their time of need has been great to see.

“It has had a very personal impact for me,” she said. “In my job, I get to help make sure my OPG co-workers get home safe, and now OPG is helping the guy I love most get home safe to me.”

Other health care workers, such as physiotherapists, are also benefiting from Ontario’s collective effort. Physiotherapy requires close contact with patients in need, and this makes protective equipment an essential part of day-to-day work for physiotherapists during these challenging times.

“Donations of important PPE will help make a huge difference in keeping frontline health care workers like my sister safe,” said Andrea Pidwerbecki, a Senior Communications Advisor with OPG. Her sister, Kim, works as a physiotherapist at a Toronto rehabilitation hospital that provides geriatric medicine, palliative care and long-term care.

Kim was recently redeployed to an inpatient unit where she is now helping many elderly patients go through physiotherapy. Her goal is to help them recover, get mobile and ultimately be well enough to go home and make room for the anticipated influx of patients with COVID-19.

Working in close proximity to her patients, Kim is currently supplied with two protective masks a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

“Continued donations and outside-of-the-box thinking will help us all get through this,” Pidwerbecki said.

Most recently, OPG has launched a “Solutions Team” mandated to collect, evaluate and quickly implement ideas to help ensure safety for essential employees working to keep the lights on, and to further support our frontline health care workers. We’ll be sharing more on this initiative soon.