Innovative Medicines Canada Nurse Practitioner Award

My name is Nav Dhillon. I was drawn to a career in nursing because of the versatile and dynamic nature of the profession. I appreciated the many different health care career paths that an education in nursing can offer, including, but not limited to, health promotion, administration, and acute and community-based care. Although I thoroughly enjoyed working as a Registered Nurse on an acute surgical unit at VGH, I had a strong desire to enhance my knowledge and develop my practice. I wanted to gain the independence to enact decisions, advocate for my patients, and have a more direct positive impact on their health outcomes. This motivation to become an autonomous practitioner is what led me to enroll in the UBC Master of Nursing, Nurse Practitioner Program. After graduating from the NP program this year, I plan to work in the primary care arena providing comprehensive care to patients across the lifespan with a focus on health promotion and disease prevention. I am also particularly interested in transgender health and looking at ways in which primary care services can be more accessible and inclusive of such minority groups. This interest also inspired me to write an article titled “Bridging Barriers to Cervical Cancer Screening: A Scoping Review”, which was recently published in the American Journal of Men’s Health.