What are you passionate about?

I love providing health care. I absolutely love my job. I could do my job all day, it doesn’t feel like work to me. I like reviewing bloodwork and hearing the health history that goes with it. I like helping people feel better, not only physically but also about themselves. I think there are few people in this world who are lucky enough to love what they do. I am passionate about health care.

What do people really need to understand in order to live healthier lives?

Patients need to understand their bodies and how they are influenced by lifestyle, stress, sleep. They need to understand their bloodwork. They need to understand the long-term consequences of not eating well or exercising. They need to understand that sometimes the medications provided in allopathic, or family medicine, really are just a Band-Aid solution that can’t make up for lifestyle changes that could significantly improve quality of living.

Mainstream medicine looks down on functional and integrative medicine and yet there is research to support the positive effects of these 5 crucial areas:

1. Proper Supplementation – including hormone balancing
2. Healthy Eating
3. Stress Reduction
4. Sleep
5. Exercise

These are the 5 most important elements to living well.

How collaborative are you with your patients?

I feel what patients want more than anything is to be heard. People have many different experiences and providing health care is more than just looking at numbers or just providing medications. It is listening to patient experiences. In these experiences there are clues to patient health and wellbeing. I like helping them feel empowered to make the necessary changes to make a difference in their health care.

I like to “fix” things. I like helping people get on the path to wellness through care planning, referrals to appropriate specialists, and advocating for patients who have special needs.

What did you want to do when you were 10 years old?

When I was 10, I wanted to be a nurse. I worked with two elderly women in our neighbourhood and for $5 a week. I would clean their apartments, run errands, and do laundry. Sometimes they needed help with personal care. Back then, $10 a week was a lot of money! I could treat my family to donuts after church. I could help my dad. I loved going to the local hospital to volunteer or help other people in their homes. And when I needed help, my dad was a nurse and he could come over to assist me. I always wanted to do community nursing since then and I’ve done it. I’ve done VON nursing. I’ve done palliative care at home for years. I have done what I set out to do when I was 10, and I have loved every minute.

How stimulating is the business side of what you do?

I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur, but here I am! It always seemed like such a vast unknown. It is so enjoyable. I’m loving it! And there is so much to learn! I have been fortunate and blessed to be able to do what drives me – teaching healthcare to patients, helping them feel better and more balanced. I’m constantly learning how to do this in a creative way for patients, thinking outside the box.

What’s unique about the sort of care patients receive at Live Well Health Clinic?

It is providing care that is unique to each individual. It is remembering someone’s anxiety during a test and doing something to help them relax – playing a palliative patient’s favourite song as they are dying to bring comfort. It isn’t just about the medication a patient may need, it’s all of the little things. It’s hearing the stress of the mother overburdened by small children, fulltime work and school – and acknowledging her fears and anxieties, but more importantly, telling her she matters. It’s taking that extra time to listen to someone cry, or yell or express frustration. It isn’t charging them for every minute over 30 minutes. It’s the extra call to check in and let them know you care.

If you could imagine looking back on your life and summing up who you were and what you did in a few simple lines, what would you say?

I provided health care that mattered. I didn’t just play it safe – I provided care that made a difference.