Meet Anita Hoang, the Nurse Practitioner who’s “filling the care gap” with Urgent Care Ontario
In 2023, one in five emergency department visits in Ontario involved patients going to the ER for non-urgent issues because they didn't have a family doctor or access to other services.
Anita Hoang is a Nurse Practitioner in St. Joe’s Urgent Care Centre focusing on virtual care. She says the best part of her job is helping to fill that care gap through her work with Urgent Care Ontario where she sees patients in the Ontario Health West Region, serving people from Waterloo to Windsor and Tobermory to Niagara Falls.
“My patients are very grateful, and say it’s a very important service,” Anita says. “Many of the patients I see don’t have family doctors, so we’re one of their only ways to access care. I’m grateful to help improve the health of people who otherwise wouldn’t have care at all."
Anita has spent most of her 10-year nursing career in medical-surgical intensive care units. In 2021, she completed the Nurse Practitioner program, during which she gained experience working with patients who had strokes and liver transplants, as well as providing primary care.
Before joining Urgent Care Ontario this fall, Anita worked in liver transplant in Toronto for two years, caring for patients experiencing gastrointestinal issues, liver failure and post-surgical complications.
When she first began her role in St. Joe’s Urgent Care Centre, Anita was also working in the St. Joe’s ICU. “It’s nice to focus on one thing at a time now and have more time to be in Hamilton,” she says.
As a student, Anita provided primary care in a hybrid model, so the transition to providing care virtually was a natural one for her.
“I gravitated towards virtual care during COVID. We all had to adjust to it, so instead of a one-off, virtual care became a part of healthcare,” Anita says.
Anita starts her day at 1 p.m., first with administrative work, then she starts seeing patients. On average, Anita sees 12 patients a day, but she notes that “appointments picked up at the beginning of cold, COVID and flu season. When the warmer weather went away, we started to see more cold and flu complaints,” she explains.
Providing virtual care comes with its own unique challenges.
“The biggest challenge is the telecommunication piece... so we try to be flexible and adaptable to that,” Anita explains. “For example, a patient had their camera working but no microphone; they had it set-up but it just wasn’t working, so we had to use a telephone on the Zoom call.”
While Anita often thinks about how she can apply her experience providing in-person care to her virtual appointments, the patience and understanding required to overcome telecommunications challenges is something Anita feels also applies to in-person care.
“Sometimes things don’t work out the way we intended to. Just be adaptable, patient and understanding that things happen,” says Anita.
To learn more and to book an appointment, visit UrgentCareOntario.ca.