Dr. Kathryn J Hannah Nursing Informatics Award

I’ve always known that I wanted to work to support family caregiving; I just didn’t know how to go about doing it. When I was younger, I helped care for my grandmothers who were living with Parkinson’s Disease and cancer. After my undergraduate studies in pharmacology and management, I became a homecare provider. I enjoyed working closely with families coping with health and care challenges. However, I felt that I was missing the healthcare knowledge base needed to truly help these families. For these reasons, I entered nursing: a transdisciplinary profession with numerous opportunities to improve health and care for all.

During my clinical experiences, I realized that while there are many fantastic nurse clinicians, there is a dearth of nursing scholars researching digital health technologies. I am pursuing a PhD in nursing at McGill University, because I want to help lead the development of technologies for family caregivers. For my dissertation, we are working to co-design with families and healthcare providers a prototype of a smartphone application for coordinating respite care services. I am very grateful to the Canadian Nurses Foundation for supporting my doctoral research. I am honored to be this year’s recipient of the Dr. Kathryn J. Hannah Nursing Informatics Scholarship.