Network for End of Life Studies

Clinical / Administrative

   

Christine Beck

Christine is a Family Medicine Resident with Dalhousie University. She has been working with NELS since 2008 on ICE Project 6 doing a quality of end-of-life care in nursing homes study, while funded by Transdisciplinary Understanding and Training on Research - Primary Health Care (TUTOR-PHC), a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) strategic training program. For this work, she gained qualitative Methods expertise from Raewyn Bassett. Her 2010 work-in-progress presentation is at: Improving End of Life Care in Long Term Care Facilities: Perspectives of Heath Care providers    
   

Anne Frances d'Intino

Anne Frances is Medical Director for the palliative care program in the Cape Breton District Health Authority in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Her unit has provided data to the 3x3 NELS study. She has worked with Sue Korol on a caregiver study. From 2011 to 2013, she completed her Master's degree from Cardiff Wales. For her Master's thesis, she is working with Heather Castleden as mentor on a qualitative study of the views of bereaved family members regarding perceptions on their role in providing subcutaneous medications to their loved one to enable this person to stay at home rather than be hospitalized.
   

Lynn Lethbridge

Lynn was the NELS ICE data analyst on a half time basis from 2010 to March 2013. Since then, she has continued her collaboration with NELS. Lynn has an MA in Economics and decades of experience working on the analysis of administrative data. She is now working on the SPOR initiative led by Adrian Levy, Chair, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University. Lynn was instrumental in the 3x3 NELS research. She worked on many posters. She also carried out analyses for  ABC-SC. Many papers with Lynn as a co-author are in progress. The first that has been published related to Parkinson's Disease: Lethbridge L, Johnston G, Turnbull G (2013) Planning for care for person’s at end of life with Parkinson’s disease using death certificate data. Progress in Palliative Care 21(3):140-145; DOI: 10.1179/1743291X12Y.0000000037
   

Nicole McQuinn

Nicole joined NELS ICE as the Coordinator in January  2009 and worked full time until 2011, and part time from 2011-2013. Nicole expanded her skills in management and knowledge exchange while working on NELS ICE. Her role included the development of the NELS ICE Website, issues of NELS News, posters and presentations, NELS announcement emails, organizing Visiting Scholar visits, managing the budget, and numerous other co-ordination duties. Nicole graduated from St. Thomas University with BA in English and Media Studies in 2006. She then completed the Advanced Diploma in Public Relations at Nova Scotia Community College in 2007, and her Master's of Public Administration at Dalhousie University in 2013. In November 2013, Nicole began working as Coordinator with Fred Burge and Ruth Martin Misener on a new Dalhousie strategic initiative to develop primary care research.
   

Grace Park

Grace is a medical student at Dalhousie University (class of 2020). She completed her BScN in 2014. In 2018 she was awarded funding to present her Research in Medicine (RIM) project on cancer patient navigation for persons at end of life at the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance annual meeting.  Her paper on Comparing enrolees with non-enrolees of cancer-patient navigation at end of life was published in Current Oncology in June 2018.
   

Dorianne Rheaume

Dorianne is a Radiation Oncologist with the Capital Health District Authority in Halifax. Dorianne worked with NELS ICE on geographic mapping of palliative radiotherapy in 2008 while she was on sabbatical. Dorianne provided clinical input into the development of a poster Palliative Radiotherapy: Associations with age and nursing home residency for adults dying of cancer 2000-2005 and paper: Lavergne MR, Johnston GM, Gao J, Dummer TJB, Rheaume DE (2011) Variation in the use of palliative radiotherapy at end of life: Examining demographic, clinical, health service, and geographic factors in a population-based study. Palliative Medicine 25(2):101-110   
   

Elsie Rolls

Elsie is the Director of Veterans Services at Camp Hill Veteran's Memorial Building. She was a Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) Executive Training for Research Application (EXTRA) Fellow. She worked with Paul McIntyre, Grace Johnston and others from 2008 to 2011 under ICE Project 6 to improve pain assessment and management in long term care, as well as enabling staff to build a philosphy of palliative support.  She completed an audit of pain management at Camp Hill which she presented on at the 2009 NELS ICE Annual Meeting: Palliative Philosophy of Care and Pain Management in End of Life Care Veterans’ Services. Elsie's work is featured on pages 5 and 6 of NELS News Issue 3 - Pain management and philosophy of care in Veteran’s care and in the November 2010 issue of Canadian Nurse - EXTRA help bringing change to the workplace. Elsie's work was featured by the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement: Impact Story.
   

Cheryl Tschupruk

Cheryl was hired as the Nova Scotia Palliative Care Coordinator in July 2014. She has an MSW from Carleton University and clinical experience both in hospital and the community. She also has experience in quality improvement across health care settings. She is a NELS collaborator and supports research that informs high quality palliative care delivery and strategies to move research findings into policy and practice.
   

Joanne Young

Joanne was a Respiratory Therapist with the New Brunswick Extra Mural Hospital Program. She joined NELS in 2007 to develop and manage ICE Project 7 with Graeme Rocker. Their work has focused on research into community based cure for breathlessness for persons with advanced COPD. This team, which also includes Cathy Simpson and Margaret Donahue, is widely published.Joanne presented her work at the June 2008 NELS ICE Annual Meeting: EOL Research Opportunities in New Brunswick.