Dr. Dorothy Kergin Award

My nursing career has been diverse, challenging and an ongoing learning experience. Since graduating, I’ve practiced in a rural setting providing emergency, inpatient, palliative, ambulatory and outpatient care, worked as a teaching assistant and clinical instructor, and as a child and adolescent mental health nurse. Learning to work with patients, families and communities with diverse care needs, across a variety of settings has been deeply satisfying and lead me to pursue a career as a primary health care nurse practitioner.

Receiving the Dr. Dorothy Kergin award will support me by enabling me to focus on my studies and my time in clinical practice during the final year of my education. This focus will allow me to better learn from and engage with the patients, families and communities served by the organizations in which my placements will take place, and to develop a more rounded and complex understanding of the role of the nurse practitioner in providing primary health care. The focus of this award on expanding the role of nurses in primary care converges with my goal of integrating mental health nursing practice into my primary health care practice, to engage in holistic person centered nursing care.

It is my hope that this award will enable me to further develop my understanding of the role of holistic care in primary care in meeting the diverse physical and mental health care needs of marginalized persons and populations, and to develop my primary care nursing practice to best serve this population.