125 years and counting: a chat with Providence Health Care

Oct. 6 to 12 is National Catholic Health Care Week. To mark the event, The B.C. Catholic reached out to two big names at Providence Health Care: Fiona Dalton, president and CEO, and Christopher De Bono, Vice President of Mission, People, and Ethics. 

We asked them about the history of health care in Vancouver and the challenges and dreams they’re facing today:

The B.C. Catholic: Catholics have done an incredible amount of good work when it comes to health care in Canada, historically. Many Canadians, even Catholics, are unaware of that. What is a contribution Providence Health Care has made that people might be unaware of?

Fiona Dalton: For the past 125 years, we have done an extraordinary job of delivering on the commitment of the Sisters of Providence to healing the body, mind and soul. To give just one example, in the 1920s widespread racism prevented Vancouver’s Chinese residents from getting the health care they needed. Responding to an urgent appeal for help, four nuns from the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception arrived from Quebec. They opened a clinic and four-bed infirmary in a little house on Keefer Street, in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and immediately began to treat the neighbourhood’s sick and impoverished residents. As the community grew, so did the need for more space to provide care. The sisters bought an old sheep farm on Prince Edward Street and set about raising the money to build what would become Mount Saint Joseph Hospital.

Christopher De Bono: What some people may not know about Providence and Catholic health care is that it has always been about meeting the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual healing needs of those who suffer. Sometimes people confuse “Catholic” or “faith-based” with some other motivation, such as proselytization. But nothing could be further from the truth. What has always been true at Providence is that the human person matters. Our work with populations who might experience feelings of being marginalized is just one example of how Providence always seeks to help those who are disenfranchised.

BCC: The Catholic Health Alliance of Canada has unveiled an initiative called Awaken to celebrate the hard work of people in Catholic health care. Two pillars of that initiative are “culture of encounter” and “commitment to social justice.” When you reflect on the history of Providence Health Care, what stands out for you?

Dalton: When otherwise healthy young men were inexplicably dying of pneumonia in the early 80s, we didn’t say that we didn’t know how to help or that we were worried about transmission. Instead, in the face of international panic when many hospitals were barring their doors, St. Paul’s became the only health facility in the province to fully open our doors, and our hearts, to those with this seemingly highly contagious disease that we now know as HIV/AIDS. Back then, very little was known about the disease or how to treat it.

Similarly, in response to the opioid crisis, we opened the B.C. Centre on Substance Use at St. Paul’s Hospital in 2017. In its first two years, it has become an international authority in addiction medicine. The BCCSU is researching and implementing evidence-based approaches to treating substance use. 

The goal is to view addiction the way we view recovery from other chronic diseases: as a long-term process that includes regular treatment and a team of cross-disciplinary specialists. To achieve this, we’ve developed the largest addiction medicine training program in North America. Along with training caregivers in this specialized field, we have our boots on the ground with judgment-free, evidence-based care at the HUB sites (providing a suite of services for people living with mental health and substance-use challenges) including the Rapid Access Addiction Clinic and the Vancouver Police Foundation Transitional Care Centre, as well as the Crosstown Clinic, which is North America’s only prescription heroin treatment centre.

De Bono: What stands out to me, with Fiona’s examples, is how Catholic health care, which is really the concrete application of the healing ministry of Jesus, can help people heal with such innovation. Not only did we, and do we, open our doors and help people with new and often poorly understood illnesses find relief in the moments of their suffering, but we set out (and continue) to find innovative, research-based solutions that have literally changed the world of health.

BCC: Freedom of conscience and debates about euthanasia, assisted suicide, and other issues are prominent in the headlines these days. In your experience, what are some big challenges facing Catholic health care in Canada right now?

De Bono: Every day, health care decision-making becomes ethically more complex as care providers come face to face with today’s challenging environment of rapid technological breakthroughs, limited resources, and shifting social trends. Catholic health care’s long commitment to profound contemplation of the promotion of human dignity equips us with effective, caring, and compassionate ethically based approaches to these and other complexities. 

I believe we can maintain our considered ethical positions, while ensuring we interact with each person, respecting the rich diversity of cultures, faiths and traditions of those we serve.

BCC: What are some of your hopes for the new St. Paul’s Hospital?

Dalton: My hope is that we take all that is good about the unique St Paul’s culture (our compassion, tenacity, and innovation) and create a place where the best people are attracted to work and enabled to be their best. My ambition is that this enables us to provide the best possible health care to those who need it the most in our society, and that this spirit of compassion and innovation inspires people around the world to do things differently.

De Bono: Quite simply my hope is that the new St. Paul’s revolutionizes health care for British Columbians and that its care innovations have an ever-growing global impact.

My desire is that the new hospital draws even more of the best, brightest, and most caring local and international health care staff – that it is both the place you want to find your health care and where you will want to work.

BCC: Providence Health Care is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Let’s look forward another 125 years. Say someone that many years from now looked back on St. Paul’s history from 2019 to the year 2144. What is one thing you hope they would say?

Dalton: I think our vision “Driven by compassion and social justice, we are at the forefront of exceptional care and innovation” will still be just as powerful and relevant as it is today. The sisters from 125 years ago wouldn’t recognize an ECMO or Dialysis machine, but would recognize compassionate caring for the most vulnerable in society. In the same way we can’t imagine where innovation will have taken us by 2144 but health care will still rely on a human connection based on kindness and compassion.

De Bono: In 2144, I think people will feel and recognize what we’ve always known – that St. Paul’s Hospital is a place of compassion and social justice in the promotion of health. I also think they’ll recognize the power, strength, and uniqueness that come from working for a Catholic values-based employer. We will never waiver in our approach to taking care of one another, which always involves seeing the human person and their dignity first.

Finally, we will know again what we know today: that Catholic health care is a critical partner in provincial and national health care.

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