Helen Glass Award

Nurses must be adaptable, technically proficient, emotionally intelligent, and the list goes on!  I was drawn to nursing because I had a wide range of interests I wished to explore and express in my career. I understood the role of nurses in our Canadian healthcare system to be varied and dynamic, and that each day as a nurse would present new challenges to face, new problems to solve, and new relationships to build. As a nurse, I could walk with people through the most trying times of their lives developing my own emotional intelligence and intellectual acuity.  As a nurse I could also learn to understand how policy decisions at national, provincial, and organizational levels effect communities and families and learn to advocate for change to diminish social inequity.  In not so many professions can an individual rise to such a variety of challenges!

I currently maintain a position as a research nurse with the University of Manitoba where my spirit of inquiry is greatly satisfied.  Previously, I worked clinically in adult palliative care and on a labor, delivery, recovery, and postpartum unit.  Palliative care was necessary here too, and this work sensitized me to the crucial needs of women and their families facing perinatal loss in this setting.  This has motivated my thesis research in the Master of Nursing program at the University of Manitoba.  It is an absolute honour to be recognized as a Canadian Nursing Foundation Scholar as the recipient of the Dr. Helen Glass Award.”