James Story

Introduction (ie. name and school)

Hi! My name is James, and I am one of the co-op students at CND OHT as a Community Engagement Intern. I currently attend the University of Waterloo with a Major in Health Studies, Minor in Social Development Studies, and Option in Aging Studies.

What about the OHT interests you most?

What interested me the most about OHT’s is the opportunity to work collaboratively with other health, community, and broader social services to improve the delivery of health services. There is also integration work underway that has the potential to transform healthcare in Ontario, and I am excited to be a part of this work as a co-op student! It is great to apply the knowledge and concepts from coursework also seeing it in action.

What was the highlight of your time at the CND OHT?

My highlight at the time at my time at CND OHT was working on primary care engagement. What I found most interesting was the ability to work with patients and community organizations to identify gaps in primary care services. I also found the experience informative to hear directly from leaders of organizations and individuals speak first-hand what their thoughts are.

What is something new you learned?

One thing I learned about was the amount of work that is underway within OHTs and the level of interactions with other partners and organizations. I was surprised to learn about how much behind the scenes initiatives that are being undertaken by OHTs that may not be apparent to the public. For example, digital health has been one of the work steams in the OHT. Hearing the thoughts, considerations, and implementation of products from secure messaging between providers, online booking, patient navigation, and translation services has been quite informative.

How has this experience helped you develop yourself?

Working in each co-op has its own experiences and this experience has positively contributed to my personal development. Here at CND OHT, with the variety of tasks with varying timelines, I have developed my independent work skills. Being assigned various tasks with multiple deadlines and working in a hybrid environment meant the need to stay organized to be on top of things. I found the concept of self-accountability to be important to be an important reminder when taking a broader look at my tasks and being able to complete them to what I expect from myself as well as others.