Since 2003, Associate Professor Cheryl Pulling has been in administrative positions in the School of Nursing, Queen’s University. Cheryl has held a multiplicity of roles; her impact is significant. Cheryl is passionate about undergraduate education and tirelessly advocates for excellence in educational approaches and curricular evaluation/improvement. Cheryl situates the four-year and accelerated standing track programs of our School of Nursing as the core of our academic business.

During the past year, Cheryl has been instrumental in writing the Queen’s University quality assurance program for the School of Nursing and the CASN accreditation reports for both undergraduate streams. Simultaneously, COVID-19 hit. As a leader, Cheryl was at the front-line ensuring student safety and well-being while continuously advocating for all student’s educational experiences. Initially, top of her efforts was ensuring students were on-track for program completion and not disadvantaged by the COVID modifications. Cheryl also supported faculty to transition quickly to virtual modes of course delivery, mobilizing the availability of technology, organizing classes and workshops, and communicating consistently with all instructors. She employed her considerable connections with our local healthcare facilities ensuring students continued in clinical practicums if feasibly possible. She also enabled the students safe return to clinical, directing, and maintaining public health measures.

Cheryl Pulling is the driving force behind our undergraduate programs and as such, is well deserving of this award. Her determination, hard work, passion, and experience ensured a swift response to this pandemic and to the health and well-being of our School of Nursing students.

Ms. Tousignant exemplifies excellence in nursing education through her leadership, innovation, commitment to standards, and stellar mentorship of clinical instructors and students. Kelley developed an innovative approach to guide and standardize how we support students experiencing challenges in meeting clinical learning objectives. To ensure transparency, Kelley embedded the template into the online student evaluation platform, and our Senate complimented the rigour and fairness of this process. Further, in response to prevalent student difficulties with medication administration, Kelley advocated for, and led, medication calculation testing, which is now instrumental for ensuring medication competence in our students.    Kelley’s most innovative contribution has the potential to revolutionize clinical education and is particularly suitable to this generation of learners. In response to challenges created by an increase in student to teacher ratios, Kelley developed a pedagogical approach that leverages peer-learning to enhance critical thinking and decrease student anxiety. While evidence exists to support the effectiveness of student dyads in clinical placements, no protocols for implementation exist in the literature. Thus, as principal investigator, Kelley led the creation of a bilingual intervention protocol (e.g. algorithms to mitigate problems, standardized checklists, clinical instructor toolkit), which she pilot-tested (manuscript under review). Fueled by positive findings (e.g. Increased confidence, teamwork, and peer mentorship) she is leading a larger implementation of the clinical intervention using a comparison group at our partner college. Preliminary findings are again positive and our intention is to implement dyad learning for all students in their first clinical placements across all collaborative sites.

Professor Lapum is a transformative leader, innovator and strategist, dedicated to the advancement of nursing pedagogy. She is revered as a Canadian scholar in nursing education for her expertise related to arts-informed pedagogy. Dr. Lapum’s commitment to nursing scholarship at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing is outstanding. As a leader in the development of curricula, open educational resources and virtual simulation, Dr. Lapum brings an arts-informed lens to all her work and scholarship. As a scholar, Dr. Lapum has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles related to nursing pedagogy, over 70 publications, and has led the development of seven open textbooks, 14 book chapters and collaborated on five virtual simulation games. Dr. Lapum has served as Senior Advisor for eCampus Ontario, contributing to provincial leadership and strategic direction of nursing open education. In her role, she led several open access initiatives in collaboration with educators, learners, community member and clinicians. Dr. Lapum has received several well-deserved teaching awards at Ryerson, highlighting her achievements in supporting student learning in both classrooms and labs. Her unique capacity for team-building and engaging students is truly what distinguishes her from other educators. In her development of a vital signs open textbook, Dr. Lapum collaborated with learners, educators and clinicians to create an accessible and innovative media, well aligned with the student perspective. Dr. Lapum’s passion for her work is clear, and serves as an inspiration to new faculty members, and to nursing student learners, at all levels.

Dawn’s outstanding research contributions focus on helping patients and healthcare professionals use best available evidence to inform quality healthcare decisions. She has secured continuous federal funding: $5.4 million in lifetime research funding as principal investigator and $36 million as coinvestigator (>75 funded studies). She has published over 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals including high-impact journals such as JAMA, BMJ, Cochrane Library, and Implementation Science, with over 16,286 citations and a Google Scholar H-index of 50.

Her research is internationally renowned and impacts upon education, practice and policy through advancing the science of creating, evaluating, and implementing user-friendly tools to support patients’ involvement in healthcare decisions and to guide healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, in supporting patients. She led national and international initiatives to synthesize evidence and develop standards for translating scientific knowledge into patient decision aids and cancer symptom practice guides. Dawn has created and evaluated implementation resources including decision coaching protocols and online training programs. The evidence-based knowledge tools and learning activities she developed are publicly available (decisionaid.ohri.ca; ktcanada.ohri.ca), are used in clinical practice, and provide continuing education for healthcare professionals. For example, she maintains an international web-based inventory of >300 decision aids meeting international quality standards and training programs. Dawn founded and directs the pan-Canadian Oncology Symptom Triage and Remote Support Team (since 2007), with members from eight Canadian provinces (21 peer-reviewed publications; training resources). Cancer services across Canada use these evidence-based tools. Her work continues to influence health policy in Australia, Denmark, Norway, Taiwan, United States, and Canada.

Dr. Joan Tranmer is an outstanding nurse scientist who has successfully and consistently achieved research excellence in all her endeavours.  Her health services research program is comprehensive and impactful.  She focuses on 1) determination of health needs, measurement of health and system outcomes and development, and evaluation of system-level interventions for patients with complex health care conditions; and 2) determination of etiological mechanisms linking work factors (i.e., shift work) to risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease in women (specifically female nurses).  Dr. Tranmer’s funding record is exemplary:  $3,820,300 as a PI or co-PI; as is her publication record of 100 peer reviewed publications, with 67 as first author.  Importantly, she has contributed to the academic and scholarship development of both undergraduate and graduate students; has or currently supervises 25 MSc and 10 PhD students in Nursing or Public Health Sciences.   Dr. Tranmer actively participates as committee member, examiner, and her students have achieved scholarly success as evident in their publication record and postgraduation placement, including students receiving national training awards and recognition. Dr. Tranmer is a mentor for fellow faculty and health professionals, specifically within her administrative roles as Director, Queen’s Nursing and Health Research, Sally Smith Chair in Nursing and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES)-Queen’s.  Collectively and impressively, Dr. Tranmer’s research program has \ contributed evidence relevant to the discipline of nursing, to policy development, and most impressively to the care of patients and families.