A day in the life of Alberta's chief medical officer is not for the faint of heart.
Since the arrival of COVID-19, Deena Hinshaw has been rising at 5 a.m. to prepare for her hectic day, spending a few minutes with her two elementary-aged kids "if she can" before heading off to work around 7.
Then it's back-to-back meetings all day, receiving updates on the spread of the coronavirus and weighing new health measures to "flatten the curve" in the province.
If she has a few minutes to spare, she catches up on email while her team pulls together everything she needs for the daily 3:30 press briefing.
When she's done with the media, her "second shift" begins.
"That's when I actually sit down and do the policy work, reviewing the documents and guidelines, making sure that I am thinking through the implications of (health measures) we're about to propose," she said.
"I get home somewhere between eight and nine at night and sometimes see my kids before they go to bed.
"I often tell them, 'I couldn't do this without you guys being patient with me,' and when I do get to see them, they give me hugs."
While Hinshaw is leading the charge for Alberta Health, putting in at least one 12-hour day on weekends, she considers herself lucky to have support on the home front.
"My husband is working from home, so he has taken on household chores and the kids, and my mother, who lives with us part-time, has also been an amazing support through all of this."
Guiding Alberta through the COVID-19 pandemic is exhausting—there's no getting around that. But Hinshaw is also acutely aware of the significance of the moment. Although she could never have seen it coming, she spent years preparing for just this scenario.
"Like most people who go into medicine, it's with a hope to make a difference," she said.
Life as a celebrity
What the quiet and thoughtful public health expert never bargained for is the intense, daily media spotlight, along with the celebrity status that was never supposed to be part of the job.
Hinshaw has been widely commended for her calm and measured delivery in press briefings, her solid command of the pandemic response and genuine expressions of empathy for those suffering from the disease.
