The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Dialysis Unit ready to move to new Oakville hospital by David Lea Oakville Beaver Staff 11 | Thursday, November 19, 2015 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com While some Halton Healthcare Services (HHS) staff may be nervous about the upcoming move to the new Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH) site, many say they are excited and ready, and could begin seeing patients there tomorrow if need be. Janet Baker, patient care manager of the Regional Chronic Kidney Disease Program in Oakville, is looking forward to the new OTMH opening Dec. 13. Baker, a Milton resident who works in the clinic primarily housed in OTMH, spoke with the Oakville Beaver about the move, changes that will occur and how the staff is preparing for it all. Baker has worked at OTMH for 28 years -- 18 of those years with the hospital's renal program. She served as a staff nurse, helped open the hospital's pre-dialysis clinic 15 years ago and has been patient care manager for four years. The program supports patients who have some degree of kidney disease, but do not require dialysis. It offers hemodialysis to help those with failing kidneys continue active lives. Patients visit three to five times a week She said patients on dialysis typically have her an opportunity speak with them. "Our dialysis patients, we can know for 10, 15, 20 years. We have a long-term relationship with our patients," she said. "It nice for the patients that we have the same staff, so they get to know our staff, they trust our staff and they share their stories with us. They talk about their kids, their grandkids, their jobs, their vacations. It is a whole different kind of connection." Old location less than ideal While the relationships in the unit are positive, and the staff are dedicated, the current location of the unit is less than ideal. "We're in the basement. We always joke about it and we always say it is the lower penthouse," said Baker. "When we opened 18 years ago, that's the space that was available. We obtained a bit more space and we grew and then we needed to grow more, so we got a little bit more space." Baker said there are some windows, but they are small and more room is needed. The unit currently has the capacity to treat 72 chronic patients per day and the demands on the unit are considerable when it is taken into consideration each patient comes a minimum of three times a week and stays for a four hour treatment each time. see Improved on p.12 The Dialysis Unit with Halton Healthcare Services' (HHS) Regional Chronic Kidney Diseases Program at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH) is looking forward to moving out of the basement site it has occupied at the Reynolds Street hospital and into a second-floor unit with new equipment. | Oakville Beaver file photo to visit the clinic three to five times a week for treatment. Baker described some of her duties with the program. "I look at everything on our unit. I look at patient safety. I look at patient care. I make sure the staff have everything they need so they can do a good job," said Baker. "It's staffing, budget, patients, aligning everything with corporate, making sure everyone is safe. It's a little bit of everything." New office will allow patient interaction Baker said she likes the current location of her office because all clinic patients have to walk past it to get to dialysis and this gives