KPU Faculties Join Forces to Support Hospitals Through COVID-19

KPU’s Faculty of Health and Faculty of Science and Horticulture have donated approximately 37 boxes of personal protective equipment to hospitals coping with the spread of COVID-19 across the lower mainland.

As more individuals become ill from the pandemic, many hospitals will be in need of more medical supplies. The Nursing Inter-School Committee sent out an email to the Faculty of Health with the subject line “VGH SOS.”

“It basically said that VGH was in need of supplies … and they were specifically looking for personal protective equipment for the nursing staff and the staff and the nursing department,” says Dr. Harjit Dhesi, acting Dean of the Faculty of Health.

She says that because KPU has so many health and nursing programs, they are part of many external committees, one of which is The Nursing Inter-School Committee.

“From there, I sent out an email to our faculty asking if we had an excess of supplies that we could share with the hospital that was in need, and faculty members within the faculty of health, the lab educators, the lab coordinators, our business manager — right away they said yes,” she says.

Dhesi also told the KPU Faculty of Science and Horticulture what she and her colleagues were doing to aid the Vancouver General Hospital. Quickly, they agreed to donate some of their supplies as well.

“This gave me the idea to send an email out to all of the faculties within KPU, so I sent out an email to the Dean’s distribution list asking for any supplies that could come through. It was an amazing response,” she says.

Dhesi and her team travelled to the Surrey campus, the Langley campus, and the Richmond campus to collect boxes full of masks, isolation gowns, eye shields, hand sanitizer, and alcohol wipes.

After receiving a call from St. Paul’s Hospital about needing donations, they decided to split the supplies between the two hospitals. However, they will also be donating both supplies and non-perishable food items to the Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital.

“At St. Paul’s, we delivered them to a docking station there. At VGH, we delivered them directly to the emergency department. There were nurses and paramedics that came out to carry the boxes inside. They were so, so grateful for the supplies that they received, and it truly was amazing to see just how much the support meant to them,” says Dhesi.

She adds that calls for help are also going to other institutions with health programs across B.C., in addition to KPU.