Thank you for the question.
Thank you for conveying your recognition. The members of my community are also very proud of that. They are really proactive when it comes to education. They supported me throughout my studies, from my bachelor's degree to my master's. I am really happy to finally be home, to give back to the community what I have received from it.
Regarding working conditions, it would certainly be a good thing to increase funding. Personally, being the only nurse working at the health centre, I find myself doing everything. That means I am working at 150 miles an hour. In a day, I may get 40 calls, and I also do home visits, since the doctor only comes to the health centre once a week. In the meantime, people are constantly coming in to consult me. I also handle vaccination, and I raise awareness in social networks. I take on so much work that I can't tell you everything I do in a day.
I often stop and say to myself, if I could just have help from a nursing assistant, from support staff, who would go to homes to be kind of my eyes and hands, I could be informed about problems that could be avoided before it was too late. That's when I experience mental distress as a nurse.
My colleagues are aware of the fact that I can't go on like this in the long term. During the pandemic, we realized that the workload was much heavier than before. I'm the only one who knows the system, and as the nurse, I have the responsibility of preparing announcements or looking for funding, for example. I have to argue my case to my chief and my councillors to get support, but I don't have enough time in a week to do it all. So the situation is very difficult.
If we had more money, it would enable me to get more help, to improve the working conditions, and increase job satisfaction as a result. I could devote more time to the young members of my community. For example, there is a young woman who comes to the clinic to help me. She is studying health sciences, because she wants to become a doctor. She would be the first doctor in the community. So I could mentor her. That's the goal I have adopted as a community health nurse.