Associate Professor, Nursing | Interim Graduate Program Director, MA Nursing
Dr. Vanessa Silva e Silva is an Associate Professor and Interim Graduate Program Director in Brock University’s School of Nursing. She is a nurse scientist, educator, and academic leader whose work focuses on improving healthcare systems and advancing end-of-life and complex care. Building on more than a decade of clinical and research expertise in organ donation and transplantation, her research spans end-of-life care, donation following Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), critical care, healthcare workforce well-being, cancer prediction and risk stratification, and emerging applications of AI for risk prediction and patient support. Her work emphasizes evidence-informed practice, implementation, equity, interprofessional collaboration, and person- and family-centred care.
A complementary focus of her scholarship is innovation in nursing education and healthcare, including an interest in simulation, immersive and experiential learning, extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence, and digital health. At Brock, she co-developed the AI for Nurse Educators microcredential and conceptualized the School of Nursing’s first immersive Code Orange mass-casualty simulation developed in partnership with Dr. Amina Silva. Across her research, teaching, and leadership, Dr. Silva e Silva seeks to translate evidence and responsible innovation into meaningful improvements for patients, families, healthcare professionals, and healthcare systems.
Dr. Silva e Silva’s research interests centre on healthcare systems innovation and improvement, with particular emphasis on end-of-life and complex care. Her work examines how healthcare systems can better support patients, families, nurses, and interdisciplinary teams through implementation science, quality improvement, knowledge translation, and evidence-informed innovation. Her research spans organ donation and transplantation, donation following medical assistance in dying (MAiD), critical care, AI-driven cancer risk prediction and risk stratification, technology-enabled patient support, as well as nursing workforce well-being, resilience, retention, and professional development. A growing area of her scholarship focuses on innovation in nursing education and healthcare, including simulation and immersive learning, extended reality (XR) and virtual reality (VR), experiential education, artificial intelligence, and digital health technologies. She is particularly interested in how these emerging technologies can be responsibly integrated to enhance learning, clinical decision-making, workforce preparedness, and patient care. Across these areas, her research emphasizes implementation, equity, interprofessional collaboration, and person- and family-centred care, with the overarching goal of translating research and innovation into meaningful improvements in healthcare education, practice, and systems.
International Society of Organ Donation and Preservation (ISODP)
Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses (CACCN)
Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO)
International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS)
Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP)
The Transplantation Society (TTS)
Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST)
Canadian Critical Care Trials Group
Canadian Alliance of Nurse Educators Using Simulation (CAN-Sim)
Dr. Silva e Silva teaches across undergraduate and graduate nursing education, with emphasis on critical and complex care, relational leadership, professional communication, clinical judgment, simulation, and experiential learning.
Dr. Silva e Silva welcomes inquiries from graduate students interested in improving nursing education and healthcare systems. Students with backgrounds in nursing and health sciences are encouraged to apply. Please include a CV and brief statement of research interest. Areas of strong alignment include:
• Healthcare systems improvement, implementation science, and quality improvement
• End-of-life, critical, complex, and cancer care
• Nursing education innovation, simulation, and experiential learning
• Responsible AI and digital health in nursing education and healthcare
• Nursing workforce well-being, resilience, and professional development
• Organ donation, transplantation, and donation following MAiD
• International and cross-system nursing research
*Note that in RA volunteer positions, students may be considered for the publication authorship list depending on the collaboration level as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
Undergraduate students interested in research, healthcare innovation, and nursing education are welcome to explore opportunities within Dr. Silva e Silva’s research program. Students may contribute to projects involving healthcare systems improvement, end-of-life and complex care, nursing workforce well-being, simulation and extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence and digital health, and cancer care and AI-enabled risk prediction. Opportunities may include literature reviews, data collection and analysis, development and evaluation of educational or digital innovations, knowledge translation, and research dissemination. Positions are on volunteer basis, providing students with hands-on research experience and mentorship*.
*Note that in the volunteer position, students may be considered for the publication authorship list depending on the collaboration level as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.