Sep 21, 2020

Local business donates PPE to get DFCM residents safely back to work

Residency, Education, The Office of Education Scholarship, About DFCM

DFCM residents wearing donated face shields

As the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread across Canada, health care workers – including residents and medical students – formed a united front to care for patients and communities impacted by the virus. However, it quickly became clear that there was a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep frontline workers adequately protected to perform their jobs safely and effectively.

At the University of Toronto Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM), leaders were concerned about residents’ and medical students’ involvement in the care of patients. While hospitals were able to provide learners with a limited amount of PPE, many non-hospital settings and ambulatory care clinics were unable to do the same.

“When the COVID pandemic began, our residents were unable to attend ambulatory clinics because the supervisors weren’t able to find, purchase, or procure enough PPE for themselves, let alone their learners,” says Dr. Stuart Murdoch, the Postgraduate Program Director at DFCM.

In response to this, Dr. Risa Freeman, DFCM Vice-Chair Education and Scholarship, contacted Dr. Ruby Alvi, DFCM Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Site Director at Trillium Health Partners Mississauga site. Dr. Alvi is a founding member of Conquer COVID-19, a volunteer-run organization created to facilitate access to essential supplies for healthcare workers by collaborating with Canadian businesses and manufacturers. She described working closely with UofT medical students who played an integral role in Conquer COVID-19: “It was amazing to see them demonstrate such strong leadership and advocacy skills.”

Dr. Alvi explained that “at Conquer COVID-19, we had already put together a plan to get medical students at all the medical schools in Ontario and Quebec face masks and shields. So DFCM approached me to see if we could do the same for the residents,” says Dr. Alvi.

Dr. Alvi connected Dr. Freeman with Molded Precision Components (MPC), an engineering and injection molding company, and one of the many businesses working with Conquer COVID-19 to develop and deliver critical health and safety supplies for frontline workers.

“…the team got together and looked at the list of supplies the Government was looking for and what we were good at doing to figure out what we could do to help,” said David Yeaman, the President of MPC. “Face shields were on the list, and we quickly came up with some ideas on how we might be able to utilize our injection molding experience in order to design and develop a reusable or recyclable face shield.”

MPC joined forces with Sterling industries and ramped up production of face shields to meet the needs of healthcare workers across Canada. They set aside 25,000 face shields for donation to their local community. When Dr. Freeman reached out to David Yeaman, he graciously offered to donate 500 face shields to our residents.

“We’re very pleased that we’re able to help other institutions in getting people back to work safely,” says David.

MPC’s donation has helped DFCM’s residents get back to their clinics safely, and the department is very grateful for this generous donation.

“It was very gracious of MPC to recognize the need for PPE for medical learners and donate these face shields for our learners,” says Dr. Murdoch.