‘Eye-opening experience’: Hayley Wickenheiser on frontlines of COVID-19

(660 NEWS) — As a hockey player, Hayley Wickenheiser faced all kinds of adversity throughout her legendary Hall of Fame career.

Now, she’s experiencing the frontlines of an unprecedented COVID-19 situation as a final year medical student.

The four-time Olympic gold medallist tells Ron MacLean on his new ‘In Conversation’ Sportsnet series that the last month has been a whirlwind.

“It’s a strange time for everyone,” she explained. “For me personally, being in my last year of medical school while this has all been going on has been a very eye-opening and interesting experience. I’m doing what I can from the position that I sit in medicine, trying to help my friends who are far more senior on the frontlines get through this thing.

“It’s a strange time for everyone around the world.”

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Up until two weeks ago, Wickenheiser, who is also the Assistant Director of Player Development for the Maple Leafs, was working in Toronto-area hospitals.

“My life as at the rink in the morning and afternoon, then in the emergency room in evenings,” she said. “Now they’ve directed us to different things, such as contact tracing, gather personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline workers that need it and a variety of other things that we can do, only allowing the most senior physicians to deal with the COVID-19 patients.

“It’s been a lot of change, and it’s changed very quickly.”

Alberta! Many of my med student friends are involved in this initiative. Please check out https://t.co/gwRhNSqJ9p and support our first line peeps where you can. Also…please stay at home. People lives depend on it. Thx. pic.twitter.com/XIZlwRGUX6

— Hayley Wickenheiser (@wick_22) March 31, 2020

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