After 34 years of dedicated service, Natasha Bloomberg, UHN's first Emergency Preparedness specialist, is retiring as a highly respected figure in the field.
If you ask her how she got here, she might trace the journey back to a place you wouldn't expect: the theatre.
Prior to Emergency Preparedness — before the policies, command centres, and code response kits — Natasha honed her skills on stage as a director.
Her theatre training, with its focus on story, character, casting and rehearsal, became the unlikely foundation for a career in healthcare emergency readiness — where the response to a code is the script; the event is the cue to action.
"Theatre directing taught me how to take a play, cast the characters, direct the actors and tell the story," she says. "And, because theatre involves all the arts, it taught me to integrate music, lighting, costumes and props."
Natasha would rehearse each play, scene by scene, and then "string the pearls" — put each of the pieces together and run through them until they become fluid.
She says those principles apply to hospital emergency codes, where there's a rapid string of connections that must align to expedite the response.
"There are the dynamic and courageous 5555 operators who announce the code and notify the brave and intrepid responders," says Natasha. "Then, there are the staff that are cast in the lead role of Incident Commander, and the response team that enacts their roles to implement the procedure.
"A hospital is a living theatre in a way — abounding in complexity and profound human stories."
Reimagined how UHN could prepare for and respond to emergencies
Natasha began her journey at UHN in 1991 as a coordinator in Nursing Education, later transitioning to an administrative role supporting the head of Neurology at Toronto Western Hospital. However, it wasn't until UHN merged with Princess Margaret Hospital — when she moved into policy integration — that her career began to truly take shape.
Though she was initially hired as a coordinator to update policies, Natasha soon encountered the emergency code policies, and they immediately stood out. These weren't static documents, they were policies that activated in real-time during high-stakes situations.
To her, they looked more like theatre plays than traditional policies — scripts waiting to be brought to life. For Natasha, this raised important questions: What training supported these procedures? How did staff know their roles? Who directed the response?
Where others might have accepted the status quo, Natasha saw opportunity. She didn't just update the codes — she reimagined how UHN could prepare for and respond to emergencies in the future.
While the team was intended to be dissolved after the changes were made, Natasha created a proposal to maintain and formalize her role, which led to the creation of a dedicated Emergency Preparedness coordinator position — the first of its kind in the area if hospital emergency response.
"At the time there was nothing to build off of, no expert I could learn from," says Natasha.
"There was no real body of literature to reference, no professional degree, no standardization of procedures, and no formal connection between the Toronto hospitals and the community responders in an emergency."
Natasha went on to build UHN's Incident Management System and championed a new framework built on the cycle of mitigation, prevention, response and recovery. She also created processes for incident response by having physical fixed code response kits on each floor or each building where staff on units could access resources, code incident debriefings, after-action reports, and quality improvement by learning from each real event.
Lisa Colangelo, a long-time colleague and fellow Emergency Preparedness specialist, recalls first meeting Natasha in the late 1990s during work on a Y2K project to prepare for possible widespread computer malfunctions when the year turned to 2000. Natasha was putting together code binders to be distributed to all areas. Lisa helped her do it.
"When I think of Emergency Preparedness, I think of Natasha," says Lisa, who formally joined the team in 2008.
Natasha's theatre roots shone especially bright in her approach to training and exercises. She infused mock code events with dramatic flair, crafting immersive storylines that brought simulations to life.
"She'd tell you a scenario, and you'd feel like you were in it," Lisa recalls. "Ten years later, I still remember her stories."
Lisa says Natasha's influence extended far beyond UHN. She formed the first Toronto Hospital Emergency Management Working Group, which brought together representatives from St. Michael's Hospital, Sinai Health, Sunnybrook Health Sciences, and The Hospital for Sick Children.
That group has since evolved into the Ontario Health Toronto Health Emergency Management Table (HEMT), chaired by Sunnybrook Health Sciences and Ontario Health, comprised of more than 60 members and organizations.
Lisa remembers going to the first meeting in 2008, when it was only a group of five.
"She had an idea of getting together and talking about issues that we were similarly facing," says Lisa. "It's crazy to think about what it has grown into today.
"She was like a visionary."
'Greatest innovations can come from working with other teams'
Lisa says one of Natasha's greatest strengths was her ability to always operate with UHN in mind. In developing her work, she always asked: what does UHN need? What are our staff and leaders telling us? Build a case for it.
Then, came the COVID-19 pandemic. UHN had never faced such a protracted crisis.
"It was the most complex and prolonged event that UHN had ever dealt with," Natasha says. "UHN rose up and demonstrated incredible alacrity, creativity and innovation."
Working with UHN Wellness, Natasha helped build staff support centres at each site and set up social work-led peer lines. She became a PPE coach, going onto clinical units to observe and help staff don and doff. She also led the UHN COVID-19 Pandemic After Action Report with team members Lisa Colangelo and Katie Thomson.
"That report is a testament to the courage and tenacity of UHN's leadership, staff, and patients," says Natasha, adding UHN truly set the stage for hospital emergency preparedness by giving it visibility and a place to grow.
Now, she credits the many skilled, generous leaders and collaborators that supported and directed her throughout her career: the nurses, physicians, patient relations, patient experience, switchboard operators, security, fire marshals, social workers, respiratory therapists, occupational and physiotherapists, building operators, construction managers, digital leaders, administrators, Vice Presidents, Directors and Chiefs.
"They all gave their time and knowledge so that I could learn their function and practice," she says.
"The greatest innovations can come from working with other teams to design exercises, evolve processes and review incidents. Hospital emergency preparedness continues to develop and grow as UHN expands in social medicine, transitional care sites, rehabilitation and research."
In the end, Natasha's impact is felt not only in the policies and systems she created, but in the culture she helped shape. She made the serious work of preparedness engaging, creative and human.
As she steps into retirement, she leaves behind a legacy that taught UHN how to be ready — not just with binders and protocols — but with courage and clarity when it matters most.
And, fittingly for someone trained in theatre, no matter what happens, the show must go on.
