Breakfast Lecture Series

Precision Mental Health for Women across the lifespan - a bottom-up approach

Dr. Dawn Kingston is advocating for a paradigm shift in women's mental health and she is making it happen. The UCalgary Nursing professor and Lois Hole Hospital for Women Cross-Provincial Chair in Women's Mental Health says we need to change our thinking and our clinical approach to mental health to capitalize on the brain's self-healing capabilities. At the first breakfast of 2024 and in celebration of International Women's Day, Dr. Kingston will discuss some manageable interventions and strategies to support our brain's healing capacity and will also talk about her upcoming book Your Brain on Pregnancy.

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Aquifers of Meaning: Engaging with Patient and Family-Created Digital Stories

The value of patient and family storytelling is increasingly recognized in modern health care but limited attention has been given to helping audiences draw practical wisdom for the stories they hear. This interactive presentation will talk about why stories matter and how stories "work" before Dr. Mike Lang facilitates attendees viewing and discussing three patient-created digital stories to demonstrate a simple reflective process that anyone can use to learn from a story. The presentation will end with a review of a freely available database of patient and family created digital stories that can be used as teaching and learning tools in both academic settings and routine clinical practice.

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From presence to partnership: Family integration in care and research in the PICU

UCalgary Nursing adjunct clinical associate, Laurie Lee, MN NP, talked about the important results from her studies into integrating families into care and research specifically in the Paedatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Lee and her team are using a co-design approach engaging parents, patients and frontline health-care providers to implement and evaluate interventions based on the scientific premise that parent partnership and physical touch are essential to the care of critically ill children. Lee will focus on the why and how of integrating families into research and care in the PICU as well as results from national family presence studies. She will also include practical take-aways about how to integrate families into care and research programs.

Lee is a PICU Nurse Practitioner and director of the PICU Research Program at the Alberta Children's Hospital. She's an adjunct clinical associate at UCalgary Nursing and an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics at the Cumming School of Medicine.

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Don’t forget about mom! The importance of centering mothers in human milk and breastfeeding research

Evidence strongly supports - and recommendations state - that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to support optimal growth and development. However, with these recommendations comes intense pressure, scrutiny and stress on mothers to exclusively breastfeed, often without the support in place required for them to succeed.

As such, nurses and health-care providers who work with breastfeeding mothers often struggle to balance infant feeding recommendations with maternal well-being. The benefits of exclusive breast or human milk feeding is emerging at an increasingly rapid rate, however, it often omits the role of the mother in the breastfeeding equation. In this presentation, Dr. Brockway discussed the tensions surrounding health recommendations for mothers to exclusively breastfeed their infants and highlight the importance of including maternal outcomes in breastfeeding and human milk research.

#NurseTwitter needs you now: How social media will influence the future of nursing

Nurses around the world are working to amplify nursing voices and representation across a variety of social media platforms, but there is much more that can be done to unite the profession against the challenges that lie ahead. Get caught up on the latest trends and find a point of connection for your own #nursing expertise. 

Dr. Tracie Risling, RN PhD, UCalgary Nursing associate professor and a health and nursing informatics researcher, dispels myths and reluctance around social media and highlights the importance of the platforms for health care in the digital age.

Supporting those living with and beyond cancer: state of knowledge, challenges and opportunities

Dr. Colleen Cuthbert is a clinician scientist with clinical practice experience as a nurse practitioner in oncology. Her clinical practice largely focused on follow-up care and symptom management with a keen interest in survivorship issues. Dr. Cuthbert is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary and an adjunct assistant professor in the Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Oncology. She holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in patient and family centered cancer survivorship.

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"The role of wearable technology in health care"

We all know that wearable technology is making our daily lives easier in many aspects. How is it helping our frontline workers now and what is on tap for the future? Reed Ferber knows a little something about wearable technology as a top researcher and leader of UCalgary's  NSERC research team on this topic. At this entertaining breakfast talk, Dr. Ferber will share some of the most exciting developments to date and offer a sneak peek into innovations that will help the next generation of health-care providers.

"Reconsidering Nursing: What do we do, and why does it matter?"

There are many aspects of nursing work that are unrecognized and this creates barriers to care. Nurses support both patients and health systems, and modern models of nursing labour can update the understanding of nursing for the 21st century.

This presentation focuses on Dr. Jackson’s doctoral research which examined how researchers understand nursing labour and how nurses themselves understand their work.

"And Now For Something Different: Changing focus and finding your passion"

Nurses often speed towards their Dream Job - the career chosen as a neophyte. Once there, the focus is to gain expertise and seniority until retirement. But what if you don’t follow that path? Bev Stevenson challenges the concept of finding your joy in just one area of nursing and shares her personal journey of what can happen when you step outside your comfort zone. Repeatedly. In her 50s, has she finally found her passion?

"The challenges and opportunities in caring for the caregiver"

There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers” (Rosalyn Carter). 

Given the universal role of caregiving that will only continue to expand and evolve with our ageing population, Dr. McGhan will examine the use of tailored interventions to improve outcomes for people living with dementia and their family caregivers across the care continuum.

The Year of the Nurse & the Midwife and Beyond: Charting the future of the nursing profession

Coinciding with 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the World Health Organization has declared 2020 as the first ever international year of the nurse and the midwife. This is a “once in a generation opportunity” to showcase the professions. In August 2020, UCalgary Nursing will also be launching a bold new strategic plan. 

Webinar Outtakes - Extended Q&A with Dr. Davidson

Dr. Davidson takes time to tackle some of the additional questions that weren't answered during the live presentation. Click on the link below to watch this bonus session.

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"Fostering meaningful mentoring relationships"

Mentorship is a topic that crosses disciplinary and hierarchical borders and provides opportunities for positive, mutually beneficial, and fruitful conversations that support growth and development. Dr. Nowell will explore evidence-based practices to initiate, sustain, and assess mentoring relationships and offer suggestions on ways mentorship might be introduced and strengthened in different workplaces and in personal contexts.