Canadian personal support workers (PSWs), nurses, and doctors have performed their jobs heroically since 2020 — the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So many have risked and given their lives to earn this heroic distinction, making the following sentence so hard to understand. “PSWs dislike being called heroes.”
It may be hard to understand from the outside looking in, but it’s the truth. Why do you ask? Because “hero” is a term that we bestow to those in our society who have performed a service or, in other words, a debt that our community can never repay.
Let’s be honest. It’s a great term — it can be applied generously to any profession or workgroup, and it’s free! However, PSWs know that it’s free. They know what they’re doing — they’ve been shouldering the challenges that come with the Hippocratic Oath.
We now place the most demanding job on the shoulders of the exhausted and undervalued front-line workforce.
We must face the fact that the only thing that separates Canada from systemic health decline is our unwavering belief in heroes.
