Frances Moran Award

My nursing clinical practice and research have always focused on highly marginalized populations at the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system. I came into nursing later in my life after time spent working in social justice organizations and with Indigenous communities in the prairie provinces. In nursing school I was immediately drawn to mental health and forensic nursing and was fortunate to start my nursing career in forensic psychiatry. My experiences here taught me that my patients were not the ‘monsters’ they were made out to be in the media and in public discourses, and this inspired me to not only work to improve the lives of my patients in the clinical setting but to dedicate my academic research to advocating for this population and the nurses working with them. I am thankful for the support of the Canadian Nurses Foundation and the Frances Moran scholarship in my current PhD program at the University of Ottawa, where I am studying the myriad challenges faced by the aging federal prison population in Canada and advocating for expanded access to services for aging incarcerated persons.