Former patient becomes leader in care

 

Name: Mindi Sekhon

Occupation: Community Nurse

Union: BCNU

When a round of nurse displacements eight years ago caused Mindi Sekhon to ask the BC Nurses’ Union to clarify how she and her colleagues would be affected, her union responded at once. BCNU staff came to her workplace, explained what the changes meant for the nurses and supported them throughout the trying process. The next time she faced a workplace dilemma, she knew who to call.

Mindi, who joined BCNU in 1999, now works as a community nurse in Surrey. She recently decided to take the next step and become a BCNU steward, but feared reprisal from her employer. To her relief, she found that colleagues and managers alike were supportive, recognizing that open communication benefits everyone in the workplace.

She loves the varied nature of her nursing job, including palliative care, wound and IV support and teaching patients and their families how to care for themselves. Mindi is more than just talented at nursing, she has become someone others turn to for guidance, someone who knows her rights and is willing to speak up for them. That side of her personality surfaced at a tender age in Singapore.

A factory farm opening up next to your house may seem like a curious motivation to become a nurse, but that is what happened. The day it opened, 12-year-old Mindi was rushed to emergency where she was diagnosed with a severe form of asthma, precipitated by the opening of the chicken farm. She spent five years in and out of hospital in Singapore as a girl, but it was not wasted time.

Young Mindi was forever changed by seeing nurses in action. She remembers being fascinated with the nurses responding to patients, the teamwork involved, and the bursts of intense activity. When her father suggested Mindi should follow in his footsteps and become a schoolteacher, she told him that she wanted to be a nurse instead. To put his doubts to rest she said: “Papa, I was in hospital for five years and somebody took care of me. I think I can do that work also.” Thus began Mindi’s career in nursing.

When Mindi and her husband of 23 years moved to BC, she faced the stringent criteria faced by Internationally Educated Nurses to gain a license to practice nursing here. Mindi credits her spouse with being very supportive by helping to care for their home and children while she studied and worked to fulfill the requirements for recertification.

“Until you get involved, you don’t realize how much the union does for its members. And there is so much to learn,” Mindi says. She attended her first BCNU Convention earlier this year and found it to be such a positive experience that she is looking forward to the next one.

Mindi’s message to nurses is: “it’s your union too – get involved!”