Maureen Johnston, RN

Community Health Nurse / Acting Nurse in Charge – Sachs Harbour

A physician lies on an examination bed in a healthcare clinic while connected to monitoring leads, giving a thumbs-up gesture. Standing beside the bed is a healthcare professional wearing red scrubs. The room contains medical equipment, including an oxygen cylinder, patient monitor, emergency cart, and wall-mounted clinical reference charts. A window shows a snow-covered outdoor landscape, highlighting the remote northern setting. The clinic is brightly lit, with light blue walls and a clean, organized treatment area. — A physician lies on an examination bed in a healthcare clinic while connected to monitoring leads, giving a thumbs-up gesture. Standing beside the bed is a nursing professional wearing red scrubs. The room contains medical equipment, including an oxygen cylinder, patient monitor, emergency cart, and wall-mounted clinical reference charts. A window shows a snow-covered outdoor landscape, highlighting the remote northern setting. The clinic is brightly lit, with light blue walls and a clean, organized treatment area.

Name: Maureen Johnston RN
Title: Community Health Nurse/Acting Nurse in Charge
Location (current): Sachs Harbour currently but have worked in all the Beaufort Delta communities.

Worked in the NWT for: 33 years in total: 25 years in Fort Smith; the past 8 years in the Beau Del. Duration in the field of nursing for: 42 years. Trained in England as a Registered Nurse and graduated in 1984. Emigrated to Canada in 1989. Became a nurse after reading about Judy Hill, an English nurse who died in a plane crash in 1972 while transporting patients on a medevac from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife.

What makes working as a Nurse in Charge/Nurse here different from anywhere else you’ve practiced? The autonomy. The ability to use what skills you have learnt; to be dependent only on yourself and just one other person in a two-nurse station; the unpredictability of the job; the range of work you have to do – from crawling around in the server cupboard fixing the internet, to running a code, to putting people in touch with the “local” vet in the Yukon when their dog is sick.

What’s your favorite local activity, event, trail, restaurant, or hidden gem? No restaurants in Sachs, unfortunately. Favourite activity might be seeing all the different wildlife in the communities: the polar bears, arctic hares, snow geese, wolves – as well as walking on the beach in the summer (but not the Fall because there are too many bears around the water).

What’s the “only in the Northwest Territories” experience you’ve had? Driving to work on the frozen river from Inuvik to Aklavik; digging snow to melt for water when the water tank ran out and there was no one to drive the water truck; having to check round buildings and vehicles for polar bears and wolves before driving to the store; coming across people you know from the communities in Edmonton and Yellowknife airports and being treated like an old friend.

If a friend visited for the first time, what would you insist they experience before they leave?
The 24-hour darkness of an arctic winter or the dancing aurora of the South Slave.

What would you say to a nurse who is considering moving to the NWT? Keep an open mind. Expect to do more than your job description says. Be patient. Be flexible. Be innovative. If things can go wrong, they will. But it will all work out OK in the end.

Complete this sentence: “Working as a Nurse in the Northwest Territories is…?

Unbelievable, unforgettable, unparalleled.” Images;

Image: Maureen Johnston, RN & visiting Physician, Dr. Sasha Kheyson, MD