A COVID-19 vaccine clinic will open in the University of Guelph-Humber’s North Campus building on April 14, 2021.
The clinic will be in partnership with William Osler Health System (Osler), to expand its current Etobicoke vaccine clinic. It will run over a four-month period to vaccinate as many people as possible.
Tyler Charlebois, the manager of strategic partnerships at Humber College, has been working on this project with Osler from the beginning.
“[Osler] has had a small clinic at the Etobicoke General Hospital, so what we are doing through this partnership with Humber and the University of Guelph-Humber is to allow for an expansion of that clinic to serve more of the community,” Charlebois said.
“We’ve had a long-standing partnership with William Osler Health System, and with the pandemic, obviously we looked to see what we could do and how we could support our local community and work with our partners,” he said.
The clinic will be run by Osler staff, and Humber’s health sciences students will be working within the medical environment to get practical experience. Students from other programs will have the opportunity to fill other roles within the clinic.
“A very unique part of the partnership with Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber and Osler is that we’re going to be leveraging this clinic to support work-integrated learning with students,” Charlebois said. “A lot of our students from our health sciences programs — specifically nursing — will be participating in the clinic as vaccinators and getting their much-needed clinical experience that they have been struggling to get because of the pandemic.”
Registered practical nursing student River Soares said the pandemic made it extremely difficult for Humber’s health sciences students to get clinical hours and experience over the last year.
“All placements were canceled first semester,” Soares said. “They opened placements for second-year students this semester only, and even then, there really is no more clinical this year. [Allowing students to work in the clinic] sounds like an effective measure to help students in that field in times of crisis.”
Charlebois, who has been working to bring together the project’s final details, said opening the clinic will provide a “once in a lifetime opportunity for students to be involved in a vaccine clinic during a global pandemic.”
The clinic’s first week will start off slowly, transferring the pace and number of vaccinations of the Etobicoke General clinic. Then it will start to upscale those numbers progressively, as well as the operating hours.
“The goal right now is to get to anywhere between 60 to 80 shots per hour, operating at about seven days a week,” Charlebois said. “Our ability to do more will rely on the volunteers and the support that we have from a staffing model, as well as the availability of vaccine.”
Only those with appointments will be able to get vaccinated at the clinic. Appointments can be booked online through Osler’s website, or by phone at 905-494-6685, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., seven days a week.