I am very pleased to have this opportunity to help celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of the Ingram School of Nursing. I had a very short term as Acting Director of the School for six months in 2001 just after my retirement. That means I have now been officially retired for 20 years. I am privileged to make some comments about highlights in the school during that time and about my experience in the role.
There were two situations that stand out in my memory. The first was the integration of the programmes for the CEGEP diploma in nursing and the McGill baccalaureate degree. The Order of Nurses of Quebec was, and continues to be, late to move in the direction of Baccalaureate as entry to practice that was becoming the standard in other provinces and countries. Discussions had been going on for some time between the two groups of faculty members and a great deal of thought had been given to how the nursing content of the two programmes might best fit together. The university programme would be shorter than it had been and yet there were many courses in the behavioural and physical sciences that were considered essential for the knowledge underlying the practice of nursing. One major sticking point had been the need for physiology, an upper level biology at the university, which was considered essential for comprehension of patient diagnoses and treatments and for planning appropriate nursing interventions to benefit the patients and help them live a healthy life. In order to get to the required course at McGill there were several prerequisites in biology and organic chemistry. This made it difficult to include all the courses in other disciplines that would help students understand the whole patient and family.
I had been not been involved in curriculum development at the baccalaureate level at McGill but I done so elsewhere. I also had had considerable experience across Canada in the development of the Accreditation Programme of the Canadian Association of University Schools of Nursing (now CASN). I cannot remember now, but I had probably made accreditation site visits to at least twelve schools of nursing, including McGill, before I moved to Montreal. The best planning always seemed to involve open communication among the participants. I invited teachers of biology at the three key CEGEPs and those of the required courses at different levels at McGill to come a meeting. I think there were six or seven people in my office. It was very clear that these people had not met each other before, but when the McGill faculty members began describing the specific components of prerequisite courses that were needed, the CEGEP teachers said they taught that content in some of their courses. They were all speaking a language that I did not understand, but that was not important. What mattered was that they were talking to each other with one group making offers to adjust the CEGEP biology courses to meet the needs of upper level McGill courses and the other group agreeing that that could eliminate the need for a prerequisite course. Of course, the details were not settled for some time, but the one meeting had been the start of a collaborative process and ultimate integration for some of the sciences in the nursing programmes.
The second situation did not have as successful an outcome. This had to do with the funding for clinical teaching in the Schools of Nursing, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Communication Sciences. The directors met several times together and with the Dean of Medicine. There was funding for clinical teaching that came from the provincial government, but there did not seem to be any way to find out where it went. We were told that it went to the hospitals, but then it disappeared. None of the schools had all their clinical teaching in hospitals, but there did not seem to be any way to obtain funding for hospital-based clinicians who were teaching and evaluating students in our disciplines, let alone those in other settings. We went nowhere with this issue and as far as I know there has not been any real progress made since my time.
Although nursing education has evolved a great deal and resources such as the Satoko Shibata Clinical Nursing Laboratory have made the learning process very different, I still believe that learning to nurse is based on the integration of sound knowledge and clinical experience. How this is achieved within a programme will continue to change and needs to be grounded in comprehensive educational research, just as the development of knowledge in nursing practice needs to be based on rigorous clinical research. I believe the future for nursing looks strong and vibrant and I am confident that McGill’s Ingram School of Nursing will continue to develop innovative approaches to nursing education.