For the last three years, hockey legend Hayley Wickenheiser has traded in her skates for a stethoscope. As a medical student at the University of Calgary, she isn’t permitted to treat COVID-19 patients. “That’s in theory,” she says. Just a few days ago, during her family medicine rotation, she gave a head, neck and throat exam to an elderly man who she later learned had been positive for the virus at the time. “It’s absolutely unavoidable in this pandemic.
Wickenheiser was thrown into the deep end late last February when she was doing her clerkship, as part of her medical training, at an emergency department in a Greater Toronto Area hospital. She saw a young man get diagnosed with COVID. “Seeing this young, otherwise healthy patient tank before my eyes,” she says, “it hit home pretty well.”
Skating between the realms of professional sports and health care, even before her PPE drive, Wickenheiser managed to use her profile to make changes. In March 2020, she spoke out about the International Olympics Committee’s decision to continue the Olympics. “This crisis is bigger than even the Olympics,” she said via Twitter, adding that moving ahead would be “insensitive and irresponsible given the state of humanity.
That face is the face of every single health care provider. Life has literally been sucked out of us thanks to the failure of our Liberal Federal Government not securing the vaccine procurement required to get this stupid COVID-19 under control.