Dr. Dorothy J. Kergin Award

My name is Amelia Potter-Dickey and I am a Registered Nurse and PhD Student within the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. I have always had an interest in two things: healthcare and infants/young children. As a fourth-generation nurse within my family, nursing and health have always been a big part of my life and growing up with exposure to the profession of Nursing helped me to realize I could combine these interests in my choice of career. It was this realization that drove me to complete my Bachelor of Nursing degree where I discovered my passion for improving the nursing care for families of infants and young children. 

After 5 years of practicing clinically, working primarily with moms and babies, my interest in health grew and I knew I wanted to do more to improve the health and lives of the families I worked with. This was the driving force for me to enroll in nursing graduate education and engage in research focusing on how we can support parents and caregivers to develop meaningful relationships to give their children the best possible start in life. I am now working to better understand how children’s unique genetic makeups may make them more or less vulnerable to the environment that they are raised and how parents and other caregivers can use this information to give children the best start in life.