Donna Marcy-Edwards

Donna Marcy-Edwards has been a tenured member of the Faculty of Nursing since 2010, but has been an active member in sessional and term positions since 1992.  Donna’s current PhD thesis examines the effect of self-determined activity at a garden vignette on the neuropsychiatric behaviour of individuals with moderate to severe dementia living in a long-term care setting. A previous pilot explored the feasibility of activity vignettes in long-term care settings.  Donna is passionate about the care of older adults and with curriculum revision was supported to design and implement the first stand-alone gerontology-nursing course in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary.  The course is a response to demographic changes in Canada and assists fourth year students in exploring their socially constructed ideas and beliefs about aging while offering and in-depth look at the nursing knowledge and practice required to successfully treat and assist recovery during an aging person’s acute illness episode.  Donna is a member of the ‘Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics (AUA) in Long-term Care’ toolkit working group, a subcommittee of Alberta Health’s Seniors Health Strategic Clinical Network, actively working to improve the care of individuals expressing neuropsychiatric behaviour in dementia.

Helen Laqua

• Courses