Dr. Kathryn J Hannah Nursing Informatics Award

I embarked upon a nursing career because I was curious about people. I wanted to understand how they worked from the inside out. This micro-level fascination in human beings soon evolved into a macro-level fascination, as I pondered how humans organize and prioritize within constantly fluctuating complex adaptive healthcare systems. I’ve cultivated this curiosity as a Clinical Nurse Specialist for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Stollery Children’s Hospital where I function as a clinician, consultant, leader, researcher and educator. My specialty is quality and safety, which I continue to hone as a PhD Health Quality Student at Queen’s University. My thesis is titled “Medication Safety Following Electronic Health Record (EHR) Implementation”. It is inspired by both my practical experience with implementing an EHR at the Stollery over these last two years and my summer at the Australia Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) where I completed my PhD internship in 2019. At the AIHI in Sydney, I worked alongside world-renowned leaders in complexity science and resilience engineering, and it is this unique lens that I bring to my socio-technical study of medication safety. I am honored to be this year’s recipient of the Dr. Kathryn J. Hannah Nursing Informatics Scholarship, and grateful to the Canadian Nurses Foundation and award committee for the recognition of my work to-date and hopefully beyond.