Some Montrealers are pivoting careers while the city copes with labour shortages
Global News
As Montreal grapples with a labour shortage, two workers share their experiences on shifting careers during the pandemic and how money isn't the be and end all it used to be.
As COVID-19 ripped through Quebec’s short-staffed and ill-prepared nursing homes at the beginning of the pandemic, David S. Landsman was among the province’s hailed “guardian angels” in health care who rushed to the front lines.
The orderly was deployed from his position on a psychiatric unit at a Montreal hospital and left his other job to work in a long-term care home in the city’s west end. Landsman was there for more than two months in the spring of 2020 alongside volunteers and military members.
Each day, he donned his scrubs, put on his personal protective equipment and lent a helping hand as he experienced some of the worst moments in the lives of seniors and their families.
Landsman was both a caregiver and a witness. In one instance, the health-care worker clutched an otherwise healthy and independent 90-year-old man’s hand as he struggled to breathe while his family sobbed goodbyes from Korea on a tablet. The resident had been in good shape until he contracted COVID. He died within a week.
Landsman often held patient’s hands as their loved ones, barred from entering long-term care homes, spoke to them for the last time from a distance. It was another world.
“Until this day, I have this PTSD nightmare where I’m back at the residence and roaming the halls,” Landsman said. “And I hear someone saying ‘pal, pal’ and when we go into the room they say ‘Can you prop up my pillow?’
“Because that’s all we could do. You know, we cannot give them more oxygen because they’re already on their way out.”
When Landsman’s deployment came to an end, he was given a short break before he went back to his shifts at the hospital. But the deaths of patients and their pain stayed with him. He was exhausted from it all. On top of that, his hours were all over the place and he began to feel like a number.
