My nursing career began in 1978. Fresh off the family farm, a position as a nurse's aid at a “nursing home” in small town Saskatchewan gave me my first experience in taking care of the dying.
Since that summer, I worked in acute care in Saskatoon then moved to Edmonton for my BScN. Cardiology, med-surg, neurology, Health Link, longterm care, home care and palliative home care were my main nursing areas. Sprinkled through the years were some other specialities: as an event nurse at the Calgary Stampede grounds that included being a medic on the racetrack and in an HIV outpatient clinic. Most recently, I was invited to co-present at the “International Philosophy of Nursing Society” conference in Sydney, Australia with Dr. Pawel Krol (RIP). Our presentation was entitled “overcoming palliativist narratives on death”, using the philosopher Nietzsche in our analysis. The academic part of nursing intrigued me and I topped up my palliative care experience with classes in the “Hospice and Palliative Care” program at MacEwan University.
In 2024, I made the decision to pivot my nursing practice from hands-on bedside care into
consulting and collaboration. I took my nearly 50 years of healthcare/deathcare wisdom and
repackaged it, away from the medical model of task-based practice into holistic, wellness-based, client-led conversations filtered through the heart of a nurse. The result was “Death Maven:
Canadian death care navigation”, based on fierce advocacy for informed choice. The
consulting and collaboration stand on my five pillars of wellness.
Executive Links contracted my webinar “Preparing for Death”. It is available right now on this site under COURSES. Just click on the QR code to access it. My goal is to normalize holistic conversation
about death, take away some of the emotional fear and trauma, and have people make
optimum choices about their healthcare journey
I believe that it’s not just about living well, it’s about dying well.
Let’s talk…
When we, or our clients, think about the topic of death and dying we most often gravitate towards the most common images of those words: grave/burial/cremation and the like. However, do those ideas simply identify an abrupt “end point” over which our clients have no control? Is there a place where we are able to facilitate a different kind of therapeutic conversation around the “before” of death? I’m not talking about the hours before, I am thinking years before. Could our clients live their lives right now and make decisions while they are still living and breathing to maybe, just maybe, make that “end point” less scary? Less traumatic? Is there a way that we can gently guide them to “finish their business?” Do they leave behind a
mess? A masterpiece? Does it matter to them?
Designed especially for nurses whose work places them in the presence of death and dying, these unique session may inspire your thinking “outside of the casket."
Traditional, old school, hands on training in 1978. Caring for sick and dying adults in Saskatchewan and Alberta a full two decades before “Dr.Google”.
From a western medicine and health care lens, within an environment where patients were older or seniors, primarily English speaking, Caucasian, ethnocentric delivery of medicalized treatment most people living independently and proud to be doing so.
None were concerned about how to pay for the treatment or hospital stay (Canadian model)
Nursing practice over last half century includes medsurg, home care, palliative home care, race track (NO practice in northern Canadian communities, research, neonate, pediatric, psychiatry, OH/industrial, remand, forensics, cruise ships, etc.)