Nurses Association of New Brunswick CNA Centennial Award

I began my nursing career after earning a baccalaureate degree in 1984 from the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick. I worked as a staff nurse in both large urban and small community hospitals in many areas including: psychiatry, emergency, and medical-surgical units, and cared for maternity, pediatric, and acute cardiac patients. I had the opportunity to work in the private sector, where I learned more about community nursing, business practices, and the products nurses use everyday. The next ten years of my career were focused on nursing informatics where I helped establish nursing workload measurement tools, documentation systems, and helped determine, define, and collect various healthcare statistics for provincial reporting.

During the last 14 years, I have worked in regulation, helping nurses meet the standards of practice and uphold public trust in the nursing profession. I have completed my graduate courses at the University of New Brunswick, and will begin my thesis in September, 2015.

My interest in parish nursing leads me to research spiritual nursing care with the hope of learning more on how parish nurses develop their spiritual nursing practice over time. I hope that my research can help develop nursing education programs and standards of practice that include spiritual nursing care for all patients.

This CNF scholarship will enable me to pay for the cost of conducting interviews and completing my research over the next year. By completing my Masters in Nursing program, I hope to be able to teach and work at the international level.