National Nursing Week: Milena Oliva thrives on the frontlines

To celebrate National Nursing Week—which began on May 10—the Ryerson Rams will be featuring current and former student-athletes who are majoring in or working in nursing. This spotlight shines on new nursing graduate Milena Oliva, who is currently working at Mt. Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made society reconsider the word "essential". Industries and professions that were once not appreciated properly are now being rightfully recognized and praised, with nursing being perhaps the best example of this pandemic-induced societal shift.

Mt. Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto employs over 1400 frontline nurses spread across 20 floors. Milena Oliva, a five-year veteran of Ryerson's fencing team and nursing graduate, is among them. Though still gaining experience by the day, Oliva is proud to be a nurse, especially having come from such a rigorous and well-regarded program.

"It [took] blood, sweat, and tears to do my degree," Oliva remarked honestly.

While a student, Oliva completed clinical placements in Sunnybrook's nephrology and orthopaedic surgery departments, St. Michael's Hospital, and The Heritage Nursing Home, among others. She also took part in a summer research apprenticeship in 2019 at Universidade de Brasília, shadowing obstetric nurses and performing both qualitative and quantitative research. A native Spanish speaker, Oliva was excited at the prospect of going to South America and was ready for the challenge of learning Portuguese.

"When the opportunity came to go to Brazil, I [was] all for it," Oliva said. "Learning Portuguese was so much faster when I was actually there," she added with a laugh.

Just before graduation, Oliva landed a placement in Mt. Sinai's internal medicine patient ward, nurses within which dealt with patients in acute medicine, pre-surgery, and, in Oliva's words, "anyone that gets sent up from [emergency] that doesn't need to go to [intensive care unit] ICU." There, she was given the most responsibility and able to actually aid in the care of patients, as opposed to simply observing practicing nurses.

"I've been thankful enough to have positive encounters as a student in general," Oliva said of her time in the aforementioned slew of placements. "I can maybe count two bad encounters or bad days."

Today, Oliva is stationed on the hospital's 12th floor, a role that has her dealing with urinary catheter care, the assessment and administration of central venous access devices (CVAD) and Peripheral IV catheters, and administering blood transfusion. The most significant lesson she's learned since joining her current team at Mt. Sinai is that the team makes a big difference. Even the doctors with whom she works are open and collaborative, a culture that runs completely counter to what she'd been told about the natural hierarchy that exists in a hospital.

"On my floor, that [hierarchy] doesn't really exist," she said happily. "Doctors recognize that we're with our patients all day. They recognize that there's a piece missing that they can't see because they're not with the patient at all times.

"The team was incredibly supportive and just very accommodating and helpful," Oliva said, praising her colleagues on her current floor at Sinai. "Anything that I was falling short on, they would help, which was really cool, because I'd never been part of a unit that helps each other out."

That collaboration came in handy when COVID-19 first arrived in Canada in March 2020. Oliva said that Mt. Sinai in particular was especially prepared for dealing with infectious diseases since they were one of the first facilities to come into contact with a case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) during the city's outbreak in 2002. Her team, which is composed of roughly 30 nurses, works through 12-hour shifts that run from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m, or vice versa.

While the pandemic has certainly been challenging for Oliva and her colleagues—emergency room overflows have made their jobs especially difficult—she remains optimistic not only about the future of her profession, but about her community's recovery from COVID-19.

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Players Mentioned

Milena Oliva: 4

Players Mentioned

Milena Oliva
: 4