The Emergency Room at Bethesda Regional Health Centre has been quieter than usual these days and that is probably a good thing.

At least that was the experience of Steinbach resident Steph McLean who says she visited the ER for blood work just the other day.

“It was empty, I got seen right away, and that makes you realize how many people typically go there who probably don’t need to go there.”

McLean suggests that a general fear of contracting COVID-19 is keeping people with less significant health concerns away from the hospital, freeing up care for those who need it most. She adds any coronavirus worry she may have had was immediately addressed by staff.

“One doctor came in and just let me know they had no suspected COVID-19 patients in at the time, and that everything had been cleaned.”

McLean expects this smaller list of patients is appreciated by practitioners who are required to fully change out of their personal protective equipment every time they see someone new to avoid any chance of transmitting the virus.

“For a nurse to check my blood pressure she had to put on a new disposable gown, new gloves, a new mask, everything. And as she goes out of my room she can’t go sit down at her desk, she can’t go into the next patient's room, instead, she has to take it all off, discard it all, and then put on a whole new outfit before going anywhere else.”

While health-care workers may have less direct physical contact with their patients during this pandemic, McLean says they seemed especially intentional about making her feel welcome and safe.

At one point she notes, a nurse stopped just to inform her she was happily smiling through her mask. “They were just so amazing."

As a victim of bell palsy, McLean says she has been regularly in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms and is quite familiar with their general operations. This visit, while warm and efficient, was quite different, “very weird” she calls it, and yet another facet of life that has been transformed by the presence of a global pandemic.