2016 Merit Awards Recipients

Order of Merit for Clinical Nursing Practice

Rose Carr
RN

Resource Nurse
Horizon Health Network, Oromocto Public Hospital

Nurse of the Year. Integrity. Nursing Spirit. Excellence. These are just some of the awards and nominations Rose Carr has garnered in her richly diverse nursing career. There is even a poem about her.

Wound, triage, mentoring, resource — she has done it all for hospitals and clinics in Saint John, Oromocto and Fredericton. Rose started her career in the pediatrics burn unit before going into critical care and, later, to a medical-surgical and neuro intensive care unit. She spent 23 years working in the emergency room. Today, she is a valued member of a transitional care team, specializing in rehabilitation and geriatric restorative care, where she has worked as a staff nurse, nursing supervisor, nursing educator and an acting nurse manager.

Everywhere, Rose fosters a culture that promotes quality care, evidence-based clinical practice and knowledge transfer. Around every patient, she creates and maintains a trusted circle of care, the hallmark of excellence in clinical nursing practice.

Order of Merit for Nursing Education

Kimberly LeBlanc
RN, BScN, MN, CETN(C)

Clinical Nurse Specialist
Enterostomal Therapy, KDS Professional Consulting

In Canada and around the world, Kimberly LeBlanc has changed the way nurses prevent, assess, classify and manage skin tears. Her research and leadership have led directly to progress in the scientific knowledge, classification, prevention and treatment of skin tears, while a gold standard of care is established worldwide.

Co-founder of KDS Professional Consulting, Kim is a recognized authority who has lectured extensively, both in Canada and abroad, on wound and ostomy care in aging populations. She has also led the development of a toolkit to improve skin tear assessment and treatment, now being used by Canadian nurses, and has played a key role in establishing and validating the international skin tear classification system.

Kim also co-chairs the international skin tear advisory panel, which she helped to found. In addition to pursuing a PhD in nursing at Queen’s University, she continues to research characteristics associated with skin tear occurrence and pathways for risk assessment.

Order of Merit for Nursing Policy

Marlene Smadu
RN, EdD, LLD (h.c.)

Vice-President of Quality and Transformation
Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region

From day one, Marlene Smadu’s mission has been to shape, advance and implement policy to strengthen health care.

She has carried out this mission in Saskatchewan, across Canada and abroad, using her policy development expertise to move agendas forward to achieve more sustainable and effective health care. Along the way, her contributions to nursing knowledge have been just as valuable.

Her work has not only helped advance critical health-system issues, including human resources planning and development, Aboriginal health, workplace quality, knowledge transfer and leadership. Her key contributions to Saskatchewan’s landmark tripartite collective agreement, the first of its kind in Canadian labour relations, empowered RNs to become part of health-care transformation by including them in the decision-making process.

As vice-president of quality and transformation for the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region, Marlene continues to play a key role in establishing policy and direction for clinical care and beyond.

Order of Merit for Nursing Research

Kathryn King-Shier
RN, PhD

Professor and Guru Nanak Dev Ji DIL Research Chair
Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary

As one of North America’s leading cardiovascular nurse scientists, Kathryn King-Shier is a leading contributor to evidence-based practice. Her team-based research on cardiovascular health, particularly around ethnocultural differences, has garnered significant national funding and support from other researchers in the field.

Among her studies is a multi-centre clinical trial to investigate recovery from cardiac surgery among women. Kathryn also led a study across 14 sites in Canada, India and China to examine the influence of ethnicity and sex on heart disease and health-care-seeking behaviour. She is now looking at the influence of gender and ethnocultural affiliation in decision-making for secondary prevention. 

Her research has meant practice-changing results in nursing and cardiovascular health and practical applications that make a real difference in the lives of Canadians.

A professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Calgary, Kathryn also holds the faculty’s only joint appointment in the department of community health sciences.