Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Meet the first cohort of grads from U of T's Doctor of Nursing program

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 15:17:58 +0000

Meet the first cohort of grads from U of T's Doctor of Nursing program

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 10/30/2024 - 11:17

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From left: Nikki Marks, Vanessa Wright, Breanna Lloy and Julia Fineczko received their Doctor of Nursing degrees in Convocation Hall this week. Andrew McLellan, the fifth member of the inaugural cohort, could not attend the ceremony because he was overseas (photo by Rebecca Biason)

Rebecca Biason

Topic

Our Community

Convocation 2024

Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Subheadline

“These leaders have active roles in shaping the health-care environment and ... are uniquely positioned to be effective leaders in change and transition”

Several members of the inaugural, five-person cohort of graduates of the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Doctor of Nursing (DN) program – the first of its kind in Canada – crossed the stage in Convocation Hall this week.

“I’m so incredibly proud of our first cohort of graduates from our Doctor of Nursing program,” says Robyn Stremler, dean of the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. “They are exemplary in their research scholarship and leadership skills, and have demonstrated the capacity of nurses to make an enduring impact on health, policy and education across multiple sectors.”

The DN program at the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing was first launched in 2021 and is designed to provide doctoral education to nurses who want to enhance their leadership capacity and drive system level change across health care and education.

In contrast to traditional Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degrees offered in the United States, U of T’s DN program provides students with the opportunity to participate in two internships that coincide with research projects and help them build their implementation science and knowledge translation skills through experiential learning.

It also allows students to continue working while pursuing their degree – a significant draw.

“With the DN program we have recognized a critical need for doctoral education among nurse leaders in health systems and education,” says Samantha Mayo, associate professor and director of doctoral programs at Bloomberg Nursing. “These leaders have active roles in shaping the health-care environment and are keenly aware of the pressing issues related to education and practice that are impacting the nursing workforce and quality of care. As such, they are uniquely positioned to be effective leaders in change and transition.”

Meet the inaugural class of U of T Doctor of Nursing graduates:

Julia Fineczko

Fineczko completed one of her internships with the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO), where she learned more about the association and its long-term care (LTC) best practice program, including how it supported the sector and the role of a director of nursing care within long-term care homes. Fineczko, who has worked in LTC for six years and most recently as a director of nursing, saw the challenges the position faces, including a lack of funding, the need for long on-call hours and having to step into the frontline of care when homes are short-staffed.

Her doctoral project explored support strategies for the position to help create effective leadership practices and improve how long-term care operates. She is now stepping into the role of associate director, long-term care best practice program at the RNAO, where she will build on her thesis findings.

“As a result of my internship and the DN program, I was able to further understand how associations like the RNAO support the long-term care sector, its leaders and residents, with the implementation of best practices that enhance both the work environment and quality of care,” she says.

Breanna Lloy

Lloy, a nurse practitioner (NP) from Nova Scotia, sought a doctoral degree that would help her put research into action and expand her leadership skills.

Her doctoral project was personally motivated. It was focused on understanding how to better support nurse practitioners after they graduate and transition into their new roles – a time that can leave them feeling isolated and burned out. Her project demonstrated a greater need for mentorship to connect NPs with one another and foster retention for this critical nursing role. Lloy is now the professional practice leader with Nova Scotia Health, working on redesigning a transition model for new NPs entering the organization.

“Nurses are life-long learners and this program is an excellent opportunity to take research and apply it in the real-world, level-up your leadership skills and influence change,” Lloy says.

Nikki Marks

Marks is a nurse practitioner who currently works in acute care and follows lung transplant patients as they transition to rehab and home. Her doctoral work examined mobile health apps and how they could support lung transplant recipients and their caregivers in performing self-care after transplant surgery. It is a starting point, she says, for developing self-care technology that can support people with serious and persistent illnesses.

Marks says she was drawn to the DN program because of its promise to enhance leadership and knowledge translation capabilities – something she believes many nurse practitioners are well positioned to do given their deep clinical expertise and proximity to patients and caregivers.

“I think the DN program fills a gap in nursing leadership and education,” she says. “I know I have gained so much from this program and I encourage anyone who wants to take their nursing career to the next level to consider this degree.”

Andrew McLellan

(photo supplied)

McLellan is a nurse practitioner who has worked as a nursing educator in several countries in Africa – most recently at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After observing challenges in the clinical learning environment related to the size of the student body and the capacity to track students’ progress, he created a participatory action research project to optimize clinical nursing education.

“The seeds of this doctoral study were planted long before my arrival in Tanzania,” McLellan reflects. “I had recognized the need for a participatory methodology, understanding that contextually-driven and sustainable change could not be achieved through top-down approaches alone.”

McLellan is now working with the World Health Organization (WHO) Academy to develop a global course for policymakers on reorienting health systems towards a primary health care approach.

Vanessa Wright

Wright is a nurse practitioner with a background in community and population health, primarily focused on newcomers. Her doctoral work was motivated by the collaborative efforts of community health and social organizations – including hospitals, food banks and faith groups – during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to provide vaccines to high-risk communities.

“I wanted to capture the learnings from COVID-19’s collaborative infrastructure, particularly the role of urban hospitals in community-based equity work, to understand how we can inform future integrated care approaches between health and the social care sector,” says Wright, who plans to continue to study community health and collaborative practice in her career, focusing on how nursing can address system inefficiencies and advance health equity.

“This program is a pioneer in having nurses examine the gap between research and operations, and [break down] silos. As nurses we need to be action-oriented to see real change.”

U of T receives $25-million gift from Myron and Berna Garron for Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 13:58:19 +0000

U of T receives $25-million gift from Myron and Berna Garron for Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/23/2024 - 09:58

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(Image supplied)

Advancement Staff

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Our Community

David Palmer

Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Meric Gertler

U of T Scarborough

Subheadline

The donation supports the much-needed training of health professionals in the underserved Scarborough and Eastern GTA region

A $25-million gift from Myron and Berna Garron will contribute significantly to the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility at ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough that will house the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health (SAMIH). The gift will also support programming and faculty development – in collaboration with hospital partners such as Scarborough Health Network and Michael Garron Hospital – helping to ensure that SAMIH learners have access to a world-class education right in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA.

The ��߲ݴ�ý will name the new building the Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex, in honour of the Garrons’ exceptional generosity.

“Myron and Berna Garron’s extraordinary benefaction will help us to realize our vision for the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health – to educate health-care professionals from the region, in the region and for the region,” said Meric Gertler, president of U of T. “On behalf of the ��߲ݴ�ý, I thank them for their leadership in the advancement of this crucial mission.”

Helping to revitalize the health-care landscape

SAMIH, the first hub for educating health professionals in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA and the only medical school in the region, was established to address the critical shortage of family physicians and specialists in the fast-growing area by training health providers who reflect the community. The training will take place in partnership with local hospitals, primary care centres and community agencies.

Once the program is fully up and running, SAMIH will have 160 medical students and a combined total of 252 physician assistants, physical therapists and nurse practitioners enrolled. Three top-ranked U of T faculties – the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy – will expand educational programming to this hub. These students will be based at the new Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex, which will also serve as a base for U of T Scarborough undergraduates studying health sciences.

The Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex, currently under construction, will feature an anatomy lab for medical students, two large classrooms equipped with state-of-the-art technology, a 25-bed clinical skills lab and 10 instructional labs. To provide hands-on learning and serve the community directly, the facility will house three teaching clinics offering public services: a clinical psychology clinic, a nurse practitioner clinic and a satellite of U of T’s Discovery Pharmacy.

SAMIH medical trainees will undertake clinical rotations at several area hospitals, including Scarborough Health Network, Lakeridge Health, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences and Michael Garron Hospital – named in memory of Myron and Berna Garron’s late son, who was born there and later died of cancer at the age of 13. The Garrons’ $50-million donation in 2015 to what was then Toronto East General Hospital has resulted in remarkable benefits for people in the region.

"We envision SAMIH as closing the circle on providing for total patient care, from educating professionals to delivering care bedside,” said Myron and Berna Garron. “In an era of extensive shortages of vital health practitioners, we are proud to help fill this educational and training gap, especially for the underserved area of Scarborough and the Eastern GTA."

SAMIH is expected to provide numerous benefits for the area. By increasing the number of health providers who will have received U of T’s top-tier education, SAMIH will help improve access and care for patients who live in the region, extend the availability of various health-care services via its public clinics, provide opportunities for local students from diverse backgrounds to consider becoming a health professional and increase the likelihood of health professionals trained in Scarborough to practice locally.

Furthermore, the partnerships with Scarborough Health Network and Michael Garron Hospital will strengthen research and teaching links between the university and the hospitals.

“This generous investment from Myron and Berna Garron is a commitment to the future of health care; through their support of SAMIH and their partnership with Michael Garron Hospital, they’re enabling knowledge creation and sharing that will benefit our communities locally and more broadly,” said Melanie Kohn, president and CEO of Michael Garron Hospital. “The Garrons’ gift to our hospital will establish our first chair in education, in partnership with the ��߲ݴ�ý, which will advance our ability to train tomorrow’s outstanding health-care leaders.”

A community of support

SAMIH was made possible by the Government of Ontario’s commitment to fund the expansion of medical education as part of its strategy to address the critical shortage of health professionals in the province.

“On behalf of Premier Doug Ford and our government, I want to thank Myron and Berna Garron for their generous donation to the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health,” said Sylvia Jones, Ontario’s deputy premier and minister of health. “Your support builds on the largest expansion of medical education that our government has undertaken in 15 years, training more doctors in the GTA than ever before to ensure people can access care in their communities for years to come.”

In a further boost for funding the building’s construction, Myron and Berna Garron’s donation triggers $10 million in matching funds from a $25-million gift to SAMIH from Orlando Corporation in 2022.

The five-storey, purpose-built Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex is located at U of T Scarborough at the intersection of Military Trail and Morningside Avenue, across from the Toronto Pan Am Centre, and is expected to open in the fall of 2026.

“This gift speaks to Myron and Berna Garron’s appreciation of how health-care education enables healthy lives – a key priority of Defy Gravity: The Campaign for the ��߲ݴ�ý,” said David Palmer, vice-president of advancement at U of T. “We are deeply grateful for this generous donation and the impact it will have on the health of those in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA. The Garron family’s generosity exemplifies how philanthropy can help address inequities and help shape the future of health care in our communities.”

U of T leaders react

“As home to the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health, the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough is delighted for this opportunity to increase our impact on the community. SAMIH will attract a diverse pool of local talent and afford graduates the ability to establish their careers in Scarborough and the Eastern GTA – an asset for students with personal ties to the region and for a population in great need of more accessible health care.”

—Linda Johnston, U of T vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough

“Building a new health sciences complex to house this region’s first medical academy is a historic undertaking. Creating an academy that is advancing health equity as a key priority is even more exceptional. This is a unique opportunity for Temerty Faculty of Medicine to expand the reach of our world-class programs, innovate teaching models and play a critical role in a pipeline that will infuse the health-care system with a steady stream of much-needed physicians and other health-care professionals.”

—Lisa Robinson, dean, Temerty Faculty of Medicine and vice-provost, relations with health-care institutions

“Thanks to the Garrons’ substantial support of the new Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex, students from the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing will have the opportunity to advance their nursing expertise in a clinic that is embedded within the community. This unique interprofessional environment will ensure graduates of our nurse practitioner program are well-equipped to meet the urgent need for primary health care in the region.”

—Robyn Stremler, dean, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

“We’re thrilled that U of T pharmacy students will train on rotation at the Discovery Pharmacy within the new Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex. This additional location offering clinical training in an interdisciplinary setting will be a boon to the profession, given how the scope of practice for pharmacists continues to expand and evolve to better support the people and communities we serve.”

—Lisa Dolovich, dean, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Pharma companies sponsored over a million events for U.S. health professionals in a single year: Study

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:01:47 +0000

Pharma companies sponsored over a million events for U.S. health professionals in a single year: Study

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 07/18/2024 - 13:01

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(photo by fluxfoto/Getty Images)

Rebecca Biason

Topic

Breaking Research

Research and Innovation

Subheadline

A new study from U of T’s Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing examines the scale of industry-sponsored events targeting health professionals

Research led by the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing is shedding light on the scale of pharmaceutical industry-sponsored events that target health professionals responsible for prescribing medications.

Promotional events attended by prescribers such as physicians and nurse practitioners are a key component of marketing campaigns for new drugs and devices. But there is little transparency around their scope and extent.

In a bid to increase transparency on industry-prescriber interactions, researchers led by Assistant Professor Quinn Grundy examined data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments, a public database of payments made by drug and medical device companies to medical professionals.

Their study, published in JAMA Health Forum, found that there were over 1.1 million industry-sponsored events in the U.S., one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical markets, in 2022 alone. The top 10 products – based on number of sponsored dinner events – were the focus of over 16,000 dinners sponsored by seven companies.

“Identifying over one million of these events in one year alone – and their tendency to be for specific products – should give us pause and indicate that we need to understand the prevalence of these events from a systems perspective, considering their impact on prescribing practices,” says Grundy, who is also the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Governance, Accountability, and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector.

Grundy notes that there is already a large body of evidence on the relationship between payments and physician prescribing outcomes. Receipt of industry payments, including low-value payments for food and beverage, is often associated with physicians prescribing higher quantities of promoted and higher-cost drugs, such as brand name drugs over generics.

The Open Payments database was established under the Affordable Care Act in 2012 in the hopes of creating greater transparency around the relationships between clinicians and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Using the database, researchers were able to examine records of payments from pharmaceutical and device companies to clinicians for food and beverage and to link these across matching variables to identify – and quantify – in-person sponsored events for specific products. Excluding conferences and virtual events, the numbers indicated that these industry-sponsored events were quite widespread, across various states.

What this shows, Grundy says, is that while individual health professionals may only attend a few of these events, pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring hundreds of them nationwide.

“When you think of the number of events and the number of health professionals attending these events, what emerges is a picture of a campaign that is able, at a national scale, to amplify perspectives about a promoted drug that are likely favourable to the sponsor,” says Grundy.

The study did not reveal a particular pattern in terms of the types of products that were more likely to be promoted using industry sponsored events. However, there was evidence that two of the top 10 products, both mental health-oriented drugs, had more events for nurse practitioners than physicians, indicating their importance as prescribers in the pharmaceutical market.

In 2021, the first data on industry payments to prescribing nurses was released in the U.S. Grundy says this was an important and positive step towards transparency (Canada lags behind in this regard: there is currently no data or mechanism that requires pharmaceutical or device companies to report payments to physicians or nurse practitioners).

This study, funded by the Greenwall Foundation’s Making a Difference Grants program, is part of a multi-phase project that aims to analyze the new data on industry payments to advanced practice nurses in the U.S.

Grundy says she hopes the research “sparks some conversations in professional circles about how to interact with industry in ways that are in the best interests of population health” – and leads to more research on best practices in prescribing.

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Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Nursing, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of

sgupta — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 20:47:17 +0000

Nursing, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of sgupta Thu, 01/07/2016 - 15:47

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https://bloomberg.nursing.utoronto.ca

Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Meet the first cohort of grads from U of T's Doctor of Nursing program

Julia Fineczko

Breanna Lloy

Nikki Marks

Andrew McLellan

Vanessa Wright

U of T receives $25-million gift from Myron and Berna Garron for Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health

Helping to revitalize the health-care landscape

A community of support

U of T leaders react

Pharma companies sponsored over a million events for U.S. health professionals in a single year: Study

Nursing, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of

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