Sigma Theta Tau International Award

I am grateful and honoured to receive support from the Canadian Nurses Foundation and STTI for my doctoral studies at the University of Calgary.  Winning this award provides me with a tremendous opportunity to focus on my graduate studies.  After completing my Bachelors of Nursing degree in 2007, I worked as a Public Health Nurse to promote family, school, and community health.  This nursing experience is a great asset now that I also teach undergraduate nursing students in clinical community settings.

My professional interest in parent-child interactions and infant sleep arose during my first parental leave, which sparked my journey into graduate studies.  Since then I have refined my focus to investigate how public health nurses can best support families experiencing infant sleep difficulties.  As such, my research will explore parent-child interactions in families experiencing infant sleep problems.  I will design and evaluate an intervention aimed at reducing infant sleep problems by enhancing the quality of parent-child interactions.  If effective, these interventions could inform nursing practice to improve maternal mental health, family relationships, and child development outcomes.

By highlighting the significance of infant sleep problems in early childhood, my hope is that parents receive improved support from health care practitioners.  Another aim of my research is to demonstrate the added value for family health outcomes and child development that can be gained when the role of the public health nurse is optimized within existing health services.