Erica McCormick has spent her entire nursing career at Arnprior Regional Health, and she couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Erica started on the Inpatient Unit in 2014.

“When I got here, to be quite honest, they were the first team in all my placements or anything through school that were just really nice and willing to help out,” explains Erica, RPN and member of the Emerging Leaders program. “All the nurses wanted to help me learn. So I realized – this is the place I want to start my career.”

Growing telemedicine

Four years later, Erica decided to pursue telemedicine, and now she is the Telemedicine Coordinator for the Hospital.

“Everyone thinks it’s like telehealth where you call in when something wrong and you ask questions. It’s not. I set up appointments with specialists and the patients come to me and they video chat with their specialist. I’m the hands of the doctor: I perform any assessments or anything that the doctor wants and then I relay that information back to the doctor. It really makes specialists more accessible – the patient could be talking to a specialist in Toronto, but they are right here in Arnprior.”

Erica has been working hard to grow her department, and she is excited to apply what she has been learning in the Emerging Leaders program.

“I am not necessarily in a management role yet, but I’m the only telemedicine person at the hospital. So it’s up to me to grow the program, to expand it, to promote it,” says Erica. “The tools I am learning in the program have already helped me to communicate better with doctors, with other leaders, and with patients.”

Leadership techniques help at home, too

The methods and techniques are even helping in her personal life! She recently applied one of the methods when her ball team was experiencing some conflict – as the captain of her team, she was able to guide her teammates through the conflict to resolution.

The program has also helped her understand her own managers. “It has really opened my eyes to what the managers are doing and why – it makes more sense to me now. I can see them using some of the techniques I’m learning, so I can see the effects in action. It’s really helpful.”

When she isn’t working, Erica and her family spend all the time they possibly can on their boat fishing. In fact, they even got a bigger boat this year so they could take the kids out on the water, too.