Editor's note: This is an open letter to PSWs, residents, family members, and staff at Ontario long term care facilities.
By Catherine Murton Stoehr, North Bay.
I know you are in tough and believe it or not I want you to do one more thing.
Write it down.
Each day if you can, or every two days or every week, write down any actions that you may have seen that endangered residents or staff with approximate date. Especially note concerns relayed to managers and owners, responses if any; and breaches of regular or COVID 19 PPE or quarantine protocols.
Four reasons.
- You are being told that the risks you are facing are normal and inevitable, they are neither.
- Notes now are power later. Residents and staff will have the power to decide when and if to share that information, you will have the power to set the terms of a future discussion.
- Knowing that this grassroots dataset is being built will incentivize long term care decision-makers to take even greater emergency measures of care than they have done so far.
- Your records will protect care workers and residents in the future.
When this is over reporters or researchers or an official commission can protect anonymity and combine these notes and publicize them. For some reason, our mechanisms of accountability and care are not functioning just now. I am a historian. I know what official records sound like, they will not tell your story. If you yourselves build this record bit by bit, on scrap paper or your cell phone, the Ontario public has a greater chance of learning what you have to teach us.
You are not alone, you are loved.
Catherine Murton Stoehr,
North Bay
