One of the biggest fears of front-line health-care workers is bringing the coronavirus home with them and infecting their loved ones. That overwhelming concern has helped drive an innovative solution – RVs on loan for at-risk medical personnel.
This story by Licia Corbella originally appeared in the Calgary Herald.
On Sunday, at 10:34 a.m., a registered psychiatric nurse, Laura Schnell, shared a post on a Facebook page for Airdrie-area moms.
“I’m doing anywhere from 20 to 40, one-on-one COVID assessments a day, plus seeing a patient almost every 30 minutes all day, every day right now, to make sure they are getting medications and coping as best they can,” wrote Schnell, who is the mother of two-year-old daughter Maryn, four-year-old Levi and 22-year-old stepdaughter Darian.
“To say I’m anxious about this all is an understatement, plus the potential to be moved back to acute care during the surge is high,” she added, since she currently works at an outpatient mental-health facility in Sunridge Mall near the Peter Lougheed Centre.
In her post, she asked if anyone had any contacts with people who owned recreational vehicles so, should the need arise, she could self-isolate to protect her family, including her 50-year-old husband, Darren, who has some underlying health issues that make him at higher risk should he contract the coronavirus from her.
As luck would have it, Brittany Peers had just joined the Facebook group one day earlier. As soon as she saw Schnell’s post, she took a screengrab of it and texted it to her uncle and aunt, Bruce and Cindy Urban, the owners of Western RV Country – Alberta’s largest RV dealer, with nine locations from Grand Prairie to Lethbridge. They asked Peers to have the nurse contact them.
By 11:48 a.m., a little more than one hour after her original post, Schnell revealed to the group that within minutes of sharing her post, Bruce Urban messaged her and said he would prepare and deliver an RV for her to use anywhere she wants, “so that myself and other frontline workers can self-isolate and keep our families safe.”
