JHSB job ‘such a great fit’ for Mélie de Champlain

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

(This is the second story in a two-part series. Part One appeared in the June 12 edition.)

One might call the circumstances that led Mélie de Champlain to become the new head of Jeffery Hale–Saint Brigid’s health and social services a bit ironic. The key factor was the COVID-19 pandemic.

De Champlain had decided to take a year off from her five-year stint as a top administrator with Vancouver Coastal Health on Vancouver Island. She and her husband decided to take a cross-Can- ada trip to her parents’ home in Matane. Along the way, they both contracted COVID.

During the two weeks they spent recuperating in Matane, she said she realized how much her parents missed her and how much she missed her parents and brother.

What’s more, she said, “I realized I was missing Quebec; I missed my culture. I had been immersed in English in British Columbia. A huge part of me was not being fulfilled.”

She reflected on her next career move on the trip back to the West Coast, and once back in Vancouver, she started checking out opportunities in her field in Quebec. She soon found herself on the phone with Jeffery Hale Community Partners head Richard Walling and senior health network official Patrick Duchesne.

“They were testing my English,” she joked. “But I told them, ‘I want to come.’”

De Champlain officially started the job as head of Jeffery Hale–Saint Brigid’s (JHSB) combined health services in December 2023. As it turned out, her case of COVID had brought her to the management of two facilities particularly hard hit by the pandemic.

Now that she’s been on the job for a year and a half, she’s gotten to know the English- speaking community she serves. “It’s a community that has a strong philanthropic history and has a strong sense of belonging and doesn’t want anybody left behind,” she said.

That means, she said, finding “creative ways to provide them with services, involving Jeffery Hale Partners and [Voice of English-speaking Québec]. That is really the strength of the anglophone community.”

Asked what challenges she identified once she settled into the job, de Champlain immediately mentioned recruitment of qualified staff, particularly bilingual staff allowing JHSB to meet its commitment to a level of service in French and English, especially at Saint Brigid’s.

She said some 30 care aides have been hired in recent months and considers that critical situation resolved for now. However, the challenge of finding bilingual nurses remains.

Another challenge has been finding space in the hospital to adapt to changing needs. She gives the example of a new clinic for latent tuberculosis cases and a unit for evaluating asylum seekers.

“We tried to be creative and optimize space and were able to create those two clinics,” she said.

Another big task on de Champlain’s plate is the longstanding project to build a new care home to replace Saint Brigid’s which no longer suits the needs of a clientele requiring, for the most part, heavy care.

At the instigation of Walling and JHSB board chair Bryan O’Gallagher, Quebec Infrastructure Minister and Minister for the capital region Jonatan Julien recently visited Saint Brigid’s to observe the conditions.

De Champlain said she is “optimistic” plans for a new facility will be put on the government’s priority list.

Now with a firm grasp on the demands of the job and declaring “it’s been such a great fit” for her, de Champlain said her message to the community is that “the services of the Jeffery Hale are continuously changing and transforming according to the needs of the population.

“We’ve got community services that are providing care for all, we’ve got the minor emergencies clinic, we’re renovating the medical imaging unit right now. We’ve got lab tests …, ” and on and on.

When she’s not tending to the health needs of the community, de Champlain, the mother of a young adult son and daughter, relishes walking around her adoptive city. “It’s like visiting five different neighbourhoods on the same walk.”

For the adventurous nurse from Matane, after a lifetime of working around the world and in Canada, it’s like she’s found home.