What Do They Do?: Susanne Hale

This "What Do They Do?" we profile Susanne Hale - Health Programs Officer, Nursing Services. Susanne works with the Home and Community Care Program consisting of eight remote nursing stations, nine community health centres and 28 First Nations communities.


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What do you do on any given day?

I work with Community Health Nurses, teaching, gathering and monitoring electronic reporting requirements.  Capturing data and statistics at the community level on a monthly basis provides us with the number of treatment visits and further breaks down those numbers into Public Health client visits, case management numbers, consults with doctors or nurse practitioners, after hour visits, births, deaths, pre-natal visits, immunizations, lab work, x-rays and immunizations. 

This data can then be used to inform policy, support and/or improve service delivery and is used to quantify staff allocations and is valuable in painting a picture of the scope of work being conducted in a community.

 

What is one of the strangest aspects of your job?

What has been really funny for me to recognize is that on the Myers-Briggs test I would be considered an introvert, but when I travel into communities and actually see where people work and the conditions they work in, I get to explain the importance of the reporting systems, I get to teach how the reporting works and I find I absolutely love it and become quite an extrovert during the teaching process.


What is the best part of your job?

I think that once data is collected and numbers translated into charts and graphs, making linkages to other FNHA department and programs, such as the CMO's office, is exciting. The data collected really does tell a story and can quantify the state of health in a particular community or track trends in health and wellness that can be analyzed. I also love working with the Director of Nursing and the Home and Community Care Manager; they make the work at FNHA so enjoyable.