Ginette Lemire Rodger Award

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to CNF for awarding me CNF Ginette Lemire Rodger scholarship to fund my Master’s program at the University of Saskatchewan. My nursing career has been an exciting journey which begun with an application to nursing school up until this point where I have found a niche in the profession as a nursing instructor and program coordinator. My experience as a general duty nurse on an Internal Medicine Unit, a Trauma and Intensive Care Unit nurse in rural Manitoba and as a Hospital Administrator have greatly enhanced my life and provided the much-needed anecdotes to enrich my teaching profession.

My passion and interest in teaching drives me to pursue higher education in the area of nursing education and leadership. During the course of my program, I want to explore the area of compassion fatigue in nursing educators and faculty. There is a lot of research out there regarding compassion fatigue in other nursing specialties such trauma care, oncology and palliative care and a paucity in the field of academia. Compassion fatigue has been linked to lack of focus at work, absenteeism, lack of empathy and high staff turnover which is a reality in many university faculties of which nursing is not exempt. My hope is that my pursuit of this topic of interest will not only create awareness but will shed some light on the magnitude of this problem and its impact on the quality of education of neophyte nurses, if any.