Media releases

• Brock ceremony celebrates Canada’s first concurrent Nursing graduating class

  Tuesday, December 19, 2023 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: December 19 2023 – R0120

  For the past 20 months, Joy Fadase has begun each morning looking at a note pinned to her wall encouraging her that she will soon become a nurse.

  The Brock University Bachelor of Nursing/Master of Nursing (BN/MN) student and 17 of her classmates recently reached a milestone that has brought them closer to their collective goal.

  On Friday, Dec. 15, the first class of Canada’s only concurrent BN/MN program celebrated the completion of the accelerated degree with a pinning ceremony — a rite of passage for graduating nurses that represents a commitment to nursing education and training. In receiving and wearing the pin, students accept the rights and responsibilities to provide excellent care to patients and their loved ones.

  Fadase considers herself a caring person and has always envisioned working in a hospital. With her mother and sister both nurses, she felt Brock’s BN/MN program was a great fit that complemented her bachelor’s degree in public health, her work experience as a diabetes technician and her certificates in health system management, personal support worker and pharmacy assistant.

  She was attracted to the program because it offered both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in just 20 months, and she had heard about Brock’s reputation for offering students practical experiences that build on the theory learned in the classroom.

  Brock’s BN/MN program places students in a variety of nursing specializations at health-care settings in Niagara and Hamilton. Fadase had clinical placements in critical care, mental health, cardiac care, labour and delivery, pediatrics and neonatal intensive care.

  “The clinical placements enriched my education because I was able to apply evidence-based practices in real-life health-care settings,” she said. “I developed critical-thinking skills that enhanced my understanding of complex patient needs.”

  In addition to clinical placements, BN/MN students have a practical component for the master’s portion of the program that focuses on developing their leadership skills. Students work alongside long-term care administrators and other health-care leaders to apply the knowledge they learned about strategic planning, team management, policy development, budgeting and more.

  It was this leadership training that attracted Palak Chopra (BSc ’22) to the BN/MN. After finishing courses for Brock’s Bachelor of Science in Medical Sciences degree in April 2022, Chopra started the BN/MN program the following month.

  “Other accelerated nursing programs are similar length, but they don’t offer a master’s, which is unique to Brock and was quite enticing for me,” she said. “I’m interested in the policy side of health care and would like to grow into a leadership role where I can influence bigger changes that we need in the current health-care environment.”

  Chopra is also grateful for the knowledge and experience she learned across a variety of specialty areas.

  “I like the flexibility of starting my nursing career in one area and then switching down the line,” she said. “With Canada’s chronic nursing shortages, it’s important to be able to work in different specialties and take on new opportunities when needs arise.”

  With the completion of the BN/MN program, Chopra, Fadase and their classmates are eligible to write the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX-RN) to become a registered nurse. Once they pass, the pair hope to enter the Ontario workforce, possibly joining one of the organizations where they did their placements, such as Niagara Health or St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.

  “We are grateful to our community health-care partners for providing excellent clinical experiences to our students,” said Dawn Prentice, Brock’s BN/MN Graduate Program Director. “The attention and care they offered our students in their placements helped them build confidence in their clinical skills and prepared them to provide competent, safe and ethical care to patients.”

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases

• Brock experts weigh in on creation of commission to probe systemic abuse in sport

  Monday, December 18, 2023 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY: December 18 2023 – R0119

  The commission set to be launched by the federal government in the new year to investigate systemic abuse in sport must overcome a series of challenging hurdles to achieve its mandate, say Brock University experts.

  While the government announced last week it would move forward with the creation of a commission, the move fell short of calls from the community to hold a public inquiry to address what has been called a “crisis” in sport.

  Public inquiries differ from commissions in many ways, but essentially boil down to the amount of authority those investigating have to compel testimony, enforce attendance and produce evidence, says Assistant Professor of Sport Management Taylor McKee.

  “Under the 1985 Inquiries Act, public inquiries are endowed with the authority to require testimony and disclose evidence and would theoretically be able to directly address the issues present in the Canadian sport system,” he says. “However, the commission, as described in last week’s announcement, does not have these types of powers and can take the form desired by Sport Minister (Carla) Qualtrough. This immediately calls into question how much authority the commission will have to address the sport system, even in the face of compelling victim testimony regarding abuse in Canadian sport.”

  Despite systemic abuse being deemed a crisis in sport, the tool selected to address it “will be a long, expensive and drawn-out process, without the strongest possible mandates at the government’s disposal to hold those who created conditions of the crisis accountable,” McKee says.

  “This approach sends a mixed message: acknowledging the problem is ongoing but also that nothing concrete will be done before 2025 at the earliest,” he says. “While this timeline is essentially status quo for governmental investigations of this magnitude, it does send an unclear message to parents, athletes and victims seeking meaningful, immediate change.”

  There is a powerful sense of urgency because safe sport issues continue to arise, says Brock Sport Management Professor Julie Stevens, calling it a “turbulent” time in sport.

  For the commission to be impactful in creating change, she says it must address two key areas.

  First, it must delve into the community sport context, where most athletes, coaches, officials and volunteers engage in sport. It is the base of the system with the greatest risk of maltreatment and abuse because of the sheer number of participants, Stevens says.

  Second, it must examine how the policies and practices of sport organizations of all kinds, impede accountability. Ultimately, a sport experience occurs within programs delivered by an organization and implementing safe sport requirements will establish consistency, she says.

  The commission will face the challenge of navigating the “complex and fractured sport system” to engage with those involved throughout, Stevens says.

  “While there are actors who serve all sports, such as the Coaching Association of Canada, the system is comprised of individual federated sports. Their structure fans down national to provincial to local levels and spans across subsectors from non-profit clubs to schools to businesses,” she says. “The challenge for the commission will be to reach key stakeholders throughout this complicated system and ask each of them, ‘What is sport really like?’”

  A growth mindset and solutions-focused approach is needed for true change in the system to be achieved, Stevens says.

  “The past 50 years has seen massive amounts of money dedicated to creating a system of excellence with high-performance pathways to achieve international success. We need to shift the majority of the financial and human resources towards a building capacity in the sport system,” she says. “Lasting change to sport culture will only happen through an investment that supports leaders and volunteers, especially those in community sport, and enables them to implement safe sport practices.”

  Brock University Professor of Sport Management Julie Stevens and Assistant Professor of Sport Management Taylor McKee are available for media interviews on the topic.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases